A worn path by eudora welty pdf. A Worn Path, a Story by Eudora Welty 2022-11-03

A Summary and Analysis of Eudora Welty’s ‘A Worn Path’

Phoenix asks the woman to lace up her shoe for her, and the woman does so. Without warning, she had seen with her own eyes a flashing nickel fall out of the man's pocket onto the ground. She spread her skirts on the bank around her and folded her hands over her knees. Her name was Phoenix Jackson. At last she was safe through the fence and risen up out in the clearing.

A Worn Path, a Story by Eudora Welty

She inclined her head in the red rag. He wear a little patch-quilt and peep out, holding his mouth open like a little bird. She was very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock. You can't even see it from here. This made a grave and persistent noise in the still air that seemed meditative, like the chirping of a solitary little bird. Don't let none of those come running my direction.

There was sweat on her face, the wrinkles in her skin shone like a bright net. It was my memory had left me. She pockets it before he comes back. Have you been here before? Her skin had a pattern all its 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, and the two knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow burning under the dark. Old Phoenix bent and drank. Her chin was lowered almost to her knees. In the paved city it was Christmas time.

Phoenix hears shots fired, and steals a nickel from the man, which had fallen onto the ground without him realising. But Phoenix only looked above her head. She even heard a gunshot. The shadows hung from the oak trees to the road like curtains. She received the nickel and then fished the other nickel out of her pocket and laid it beside the new one. Then they went in different directions, but she could hear the gun shooting again and again over the hill.

But she sat down to rest. Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied in a red rag, coming along a path through the pinewoods. She stood straight and faced him. She performs this ritual on a regular basis, and the people at the hospital humour her out of charity, seeing how important this journey is for Phoenix, and perhaps even suspecting that it is the only thing that keeps her going, providing a reason to go on living. I'd give you a dime if I had any money with me.

The path ran up a hill. The doctor said as long as you came to get it, you could have it,' said the nurse. It whispered and shook, and was taller than her head. My little grandson, he is just the same, and I forgot it in the coming. But she stood still and listened, and it did not make a sound.

Then she smelled wood smoke, and smelled the river, and she saw a steeple and the cabins on their steep steps. At first she took it for a man. I the oldest people I ever know. Her fingers slid down and along the ground under the piece of money with the grace and care they would have in lifting an egg from under a setting hen. There ahead was Natchez shining. So she lay there and presently went to talking.

The deep lines in her face went into a fierce and different radiation. She put her packages down on the sidewalk beside her and laced and tied both shoes tightly. Is your grandson's throat any better since the last time you came for the medicine? A big black dog with a lolling tongue came up out of the weeds by the ditch. The sun made the pine needles almost too bright to look at, up where the wind rocked. She shut her eyes, reached out her hand, and touched a sleeve. Phoenix goes to the hospital, where the attendant initially mistakes Phoenix for a charity case.

But when she went to take it there was just her own hand in the air. She stared at her palm closely, with her head on one side. By now she had a card with something written on it, a little list. Her fingers were busy and intent, but her skirts were full and long, so that before she could pull them free in one place they were caught in another. The old woman sat down, bolt upright in the chair. Deep, deep it went down between the high green-colored banks.