A Worn Path

The specific setting of “A Worn Path” serves two functions. First, the story takes place in rural Mississippi, a land layered with meaning and memory in any work of Southern literature. Mississippi’s status as a former nexus of the country’s plantation economy means the land is saturated with the history of slavery and white supremacy. This landscape holds a dark and traumatic past, especially for African Americans like Phoenix. That past continued to manifest in the time of Jim Crow. Understanding Mississippi in this way further highlights the danger of Phoenix’s journey.

Second, much of the story is located in the woods, a standard setting for myths and fairy tales. Woods and forests are places of wonder, magic, challenge, and peril. Moving through a clearing, Phoenix encounters “[b]ig dead trees, like black men with one arm” (144), an awe-inspiring sight that also reflects the violence perpetrated against African Americans. The encounter with the white hunter is another gesture toward this racial prejudice and violence. Phoenix’s poor eyesight imbues the woods with additional enchantment, as she sees dreams and visions. Her observation that the spring by the sweet-gum tree “was here when [she] was born” (144) further emphasizes the forest’s timeless, mystical atmosphere.

Pathos is a Greek word that means “suffering,” “experience,” “emotion,” or a combination of all three. It is a rhetorical device writers use to elicit strong feelings of sympathy, compassion, pity, or sorrow from an audience. Phoenix’s age and frailty, combined with her various physical and social travails, stoke the reader’s sympathy for her. In her own words, the journey is a “trial,” and at some points she is briefly tempted to stop or turn back. Her fortitude and courage in the face of adversity is admirable, further endearing her to readers.

The most pronounced example of pathos occurs in the doctor’s office when the nurse asks Phoenix if her grandson is dead:

Then Phoenix was like an old woman begging a dignified forgiveness for waking up frightened in the night. ‘I never did go to school—I was too old at the Surrender,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘I’m an old woman without an education. It was my memory fail me. My little grandson, he is just the same, and I forgot it in the coming’ (148).

Welty gradually builds to this moment when Phoenix’s tough exterior and stoic determination temporarily crack, which is the most emotional part of the story. Phoenix is likened to a frightened old woman apologizing for feeling afraid. This is the only reference Phoenix makes to her past, and it is framed it in a way that will prompt sympathy and understanding from the impatient nurse. Furthermore, it reveals what matters most to Phoenix: her grandson.