As I was organizing my American literature survey course this semester, I knew that I wanted to center it on short stories. I did this because I wanted to provide students with a broad swath of literature and literary movements from 1865 to the present. With this in mind, I knew, as well, that I wanted to include Ernest Gaines’ “The Sky is Gray,” because, like many, I consider it an important example of the short story form. Since I wanted to include Gaines’ story, I thought backwards to how to lead up to “The Sky is Gray” in class, and I decided to assign William Faulkner’s “Dry September” and Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path.” Gaines mentions both Faulkner and Welty as influences, so I wanted to have students think about paths of influence.

In comments about writing his short story collection Bloodline, Gaines says, “I always knew what I wanted to do. I had to find a way in which to do it. For example, before I wrote ‘The Sky is Gray,’ I had to read Eudora Welty. I was assigned once to read ‘A Worn Path,’ and I thought, ‘This is a great story.’ I read ‘A Worn Path’ at least ten years before I wrote ‘The Sky is Gray.’” I don’t want to focus on the connections between Gaines’ and Welty’s story; instead, I want to look at Welty’s story on its own, and specifically in relation to the way some of my students viewed the story after they initially read it.

At the start of most classes, I ask students what they think of that day’s readings. When I asked students what they thought about Welty’s “A Worn Path,” a handful of them basically said, “Nothing really happens in the story.” Over it’s fifteen pages in Welty’s short story collection A Curtain of Green, we follow Phoenix Jackson as she goes to Natchez. We follow her on the path, as she experiences travails due to her age and her race. We don’t, until the end of the story, even know why she heads to Natchez. We just know she has travelled this path many times before, thus she was “worn” ruts in the ground, going back and forth from her home to Natchez.

Speaking with Beth Henley, in the interview above, Welty talks about what inspired her to write a “A Worn Path.” She tells Henley that she went out to the countryside with a painter friend one day. As the painter put image on canvas, Welty read. She looked up, and in the distance, she saw a woman walking across the horizon, shoulders down and moving with purpose. At that moment, she began to ask herself questions about where the woman was headed, why was she walking with such purpose, and other inquiries. Seeing the woman served as the impetus for Phoenix Jackson and her errand in the story.

Their assertion that “nothing really happened” stood out to me, partly because I totally understand that reading. However, diving into the story, we see that Welty does much more with Phoenix’s journey than just detail her walk and the travails she encounters. Welty introduces issues of class, race, age, and more all within her walk to town. We see class and race when Phoenix meets the white hunter in the woods and she takes the nickel that falls from his pocket. The hunter tells her, as he leaves, he would give her a dime if he had it, not acknowledging that he has any money. We know he does, based on Phoenix taking his nickel, so the hunter’s comment rings of racism and classism through his lie.

We see an exploration of aging over the entire course of the story from the physical pain that Phoenix goes through when she falls to the hallucination she has of the young boy giving her a piece of marble cake to her interactions in Natchez itself, specifically when she asks the woman to tie her shoe for her. We see all of these intersect, as well, when we get to the end of the story and Phoenix goes to the doctor’s office. There, the staff treat her as an old woman who may be experiencing dementia or some other form of mental decline, and one of the staff gives her a nickel out of pity, reinforcing the class discussions.

At the doctor’s office, we find out the reason for Phoenix’s journey. We discover that she goes to town to get medicine for her grandson who drank lye a few years back. She makes this trip again and again for the medicine because she takes care of her grandson. However, we have moments where we question whether or not Phoenix’s grandson actually lives or not. He may be dead, and Phoenix’s declining mental state may lead her to think he is still alive and she must go and get his medicine. Or, he could still be alive, and her trip to get the medicine is meant to help him

Henley asks Welty about this ambiguity in her interview, and Welty wrote about it because so many teachers and students wrote to her asking whether or Phoenix’s grandson was dead or alive. Welty said, “It does not matter. It would happen as it did. I mean she would go through this experience for him whether he was still living into her knowledge or not. . . . It’s the act that matters, regardless of what might be the changing circumstances of it, that wasn’t as important as the act.” Phoenix’s act, her journey along the worn path, matters, not the reason for the journey. She believes, in her head, that her grandson still lives, whether or not he actually does. Thus, her action of going to Natchez to provide for him is what ultimately matters.

The ambiguity of the story stays with readers, leading them to think about the grandson’s existence. Talking about this aspect in class, we talked about the mythical Phoenix, the legendary bird that rises from the ashes, a symbol or rebirth. One student commented that Phoenix’s name relates to the ambiguous aspect of the story because if the grandson is dead then Phoenix’s trek into Natchez resurrects him in her mind. He exists there, in her memory, and thus exists in life, even if his body has cast off this mortal coil. That, to me, is the power of this story. I have written about the ways that memory keeps individuals alive, and “A Worn Path,” if we believe the grandson has died, epitomizes how that works. If this is the case, when Phoenix dies, the grandson will die as well because no one will remain to tell his story. He will cease to exist.

Every story, no matter what happens in it, has a message and something that causes us to think about the world. Things happen in “A Worn Path.” Yet, it may appear that not much happens because we merely follow Phoenix to town, but by following her, we learn about her, her life, her family, her existence. We get an insight into who she is and the society she inhabits; thus, things happen. What are your thoughts? As usual, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Bluesky @silaslapham.bsky.social‬.