• to some degree, the challenges she faces and overcomes in life.
• Sometimes her journey gives Phoenix confidence in herself, as in the following passage:

At the foot of this hill was a place where a log was laid across the creek.

“Now comes the trial,” said Phoenix. Putting her right foot out, she mounted the log and shut her eyes. Lifting her skirt, leveling her cane fiercely before her like a festival figure in some parade, she began to march across. Then she opened her eyes and she was safe on the other side.

“I wasn't as old as I thought,”she said.

• The variety of obstacles Phoenix faces on the path symbolizes the variety of challenges she faces in her life.
• The fact that Phoenix often follows a path calls attention to those instances in which she must create a new path for herself, as in the following incident:

She passed through the old cotton and went into a field of dead corn. It whispered and shook, and was taller than her head. 'Through the maze now,' she said, for there was no path.

• Sometimes the fact that the path is worn means that Phoenix has chances to relax a bit, as when she says, “Walk pretty . . . . This the easy place. This the easy going.”
• Near the end of the story, Phoenix can't remember something and doesn't speak until asked the same question repeatedly. This fact suggest that she herself is becoming "worn" down by age.
• The title of the story anticipates the very last sentence of the story, thus giving the work a kind of symmetry:

Then her slow step began on the stairs, going down.

Perhaps the final two words ("going down") imply her approaching mortality. In any case, both at the very beginning and at the very end of the story, Phoenix is walking her “worn path.”

The significance of the physical, titular path that Phoenix Jackson uses to get to town when retrieving medicine for her grandson is that it illustrates the love and commitment that Phoenix has to her family. Phoenix is perfectly familiar with every aspect of the path, seeming to have cataloged every step based on what it represents for her arduous journey. She approaches certain moments with a warm familiarity and others with a resolute but still present dread, saying "now comes the trial."

Even though Phoenix is in no physical condition to be making such a journey, she still makes it "like clockwork," and others on the path have become familiar with her. In fact, the only reason she is able to complete her journey is because people in the city recognize her, even though she has forgotten why she is there.

The primary symbol in Eudora Welty's short story "A Worn Path" is, in fact, a path. A worn one. Old Phoenix Jackson walks this path often as she goes to town to get medicine for her grandson, and it is both worn and familiar. In fact, she knows all the animals and all the arduous terrain along the path. At one point, she reaches a tenuous bridge which she must cross, and she does so with her eyes closed. 

At the foot of this hill was a place where a log was laid across the creek.

"Now comes the trial," said Phoenix.

Putting her right foot out, she mounted the log and shut her eyes. Lifting her skirt, leveling her cane fiercely before her, like a festival figure in some parade, she began to march across. Then she opened her eyes and she was safe on the other side.

In the literal sense, then, the path is worn because she walks it often. Though it is December and the ground is frozen, Phoenix Jackson walks this path. When it is steamy and hot in the summer, we know Phoenix Jackson will walk this path, as well. She has traveled it, and, though she is old, she will continue to travel it.

In a figurative sense, this worn path is the evidence of Phoenix Jackson's love and commitment. Though she is best suited to her mountain cabin, Phoenix Jackson will venture to the city--where she does not fit in and is often treated poorly--because she loves her grandson and will do what she must to care for him. This is a journey of love, and she makes it willingly.

Her physical journey is symbolic of her emotional journey which demonstrates her love for a chronically sick little boy who is her life. The title encompasses both aspects of the worn path.

A major theme of Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path" is Resurrection and Endurance. 

With the mythical name that conjures rebirth and continuance of life, Phoenix Jackson travels repeatedly the path from her home "back off the Old Natchez Trace" to Natchez in order to procure medicine for her ailing grandson.  Despite her age, Phoenix is able to plod along with her cane, undeterred by the maze of a field of dead corn that erases the path.  When she encounters a dog, she falls as she strikes it with her cane and rolls onto her back.  But, like the mythical creature, she rises.  And, despite the hunter's attempt to deter her from going to Natchez, Phoenix, with her golden color that runs beneath her red rang which suggest the mythical fire, rises to an upright position, procures a nickel from the unsuspecting hunter and continues on her journey until she arrives at the clinic where she obtains that which she has sought:  medicine for her grandson.

There are, of course, other themes such as Duty and Responsibility as Phoenix risks much to procure her grandson's medicine, as well as a minor theme of Guilt and Innocence with the hunter as representative of a stereotype and the grandson as the innocent.