Life as a Journey in Welty's "A Worn Path"
             The story "A Worn Path" begins and ends with a journey by Phoenix Jackson. It tells a story of sheer purpose as Phoenix Jackson makes a long journey into town to get medicine for her chronically ill grandson. She begins her voyage to town on "a bright frozen day in the early morning" in December. This is a journey in which she has taken before, and now the time has come where she must travel it again.
             As the story begins, we are introduced to our main character, Phoenix Jackson. She is described as a small old Negro woman. I believe that the name the author gives the main character is given for a reason. The legend of the Phoenix is about a mythical sacred bird of the ancient Egyptians. The bird is said to come out of Arabia every 500 years to Heliopolis, where it burned itself on the altar and rose again from it's young and beautiful.
             Phoenix, the old woman in the story, represents the myth of this bird because she is described as being elderly and near the end of her life. Her skin is described as old and wrinkly, but yet with a golden color running beneath it. "Her skin had a pattern all of it's own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath". Her skin tone represents the golden feathers of the Phoenix and her grandson represents the next Phoenix that will be given life when she dies. The trip to the city to get medicine represents the mythological trip that the Phoenix takes to the sun to do die. Most likely this journey along a worn path through the woods, will be one of her last.
             In the midst of Phoenix's travels, the author describes a scene; "Deep, deep the road went down between the high green-colored banks. Overhead the live oaks meet and it was dark as a cave". The gloomy darkness that the author has created to surround Phoenix in this scene is quite a difference ...