A Worn Path Summary & Analysis

Phoenix’s age and poverty are emphasized through the description of her wrinkles, her cane, and the state of her shoes. The cane both aids her physical deficiencies and acts as a rather ineffectual weapon against the natural dangers/nuisances she knows she might encounter in her journey along the rural path. The difficulty of her as yet unexplained journey is made clear in the way something—her body, her mind – pleads that she stop. Her perseverance is communicated in the simple fact that she doesn’t.

The trials and obstacles of the journey, which Phoenix recognizes as such, reflect the sometimes random and unfair travails of her life. The thorns allude to the crown of thorns around Jesus’ head. Yet Phoenix possesses a wry sense of humor and, like Christ, accepts her obstacles as part of life. Closing her eyes at the bridge underscores her faith in a higher being who will watch and protect her, as well as her own memory or inner strength over her outward senses and abilities.

Her reverie of the boy establishes Phoenix’s tendency to drift off. The reverie also suggests how her life might have looked had she and her family lived an easier life – a boy bringing her, in her old age, cake. Though a dreamer, she is also a determined realist, tending to her obstacles one at a time, and never deviating from her path. Note how she feels free to commune with nature, and how she is grateful to God for whatever small blessings are afforded her.

The scarecrow seems at first like it might be a lynched black man, a sudden intrusion of the social violence that faces black people in the South upon what had up until now seemed just a trial of Phoenix against nature. Phoenix dancing with this “ghost” suggests her deep and inherited connection to this history, as well as a kind of celebration on her part that the scarecrow is not, in fact, something worse than that.

Phoenix thinks, understandably, that as the road itself gets easier the journey will be easier, but as it turns out as she moves deeper into the more populated areas of Mississippi things get more difficult. She stands up to the dog, and even when she fails she accepts her fate. Reaching up her hand for help when no one is there could be taken for a sign of delusion, but it might also be taken as a sign of faith. She does not lose her cool and is clear-eyed about her situation.

The hunter at first seems like a kind savior who has appeared in a lucky miracle, but he turns out to be a more complicated figure. His initial questions about Phoenix’s home and journey suggest that he arrogantly thinks it’s his right to know these things (notice that she doesn’t ask him any such questions). His disbelief that she would walk as far as he can demeans her based on her age. And his comments that she’ll get no benefit from her trip and assumption that she’s just going to see Santa Claus show how his prejudices about her race make him believe her journey is not only less important than his but is, in fact, totally frivolous and based on superficial religious superstition.

Phoenix outwits the white hunter by cleverly using his pride and feelings of racial superiority over blacks (both herself and the dog) against him, and she manages to steal a nickel with remarkable grace. The nickel’s importance to her testifies to her poverty, while the guilt she feels afterward shows her conscience and deep religious feeling (though the fact that she steals the nickel might, at this point, raise questions in some reader’s minds about her character or motives).

Perhaps amped up on his “success” in proving his and his dog’s strength over the black dog, the hunter does not stop there and feels the need to also assert his power over Phoenix, an old and defenseless black lady. Phoenix alludes directly to white violence against innocent blacks, but the hunter barely seems to notice—it doesn’t seem important to him that she’s seen innocents killed. Instead he tells her to keep to her place in society—in her rural home. He then lies about not having any money – his lost nickel proves that he did at least have that. Phoenix’s earlier comment about God watching the whole time gains some resonance here. Is God watching the hunter as he threatens and lies, too?

Rather than the city being a place of comfort for Phoenix, it is a place of disorientation. Yet Phoenix is guided by instinct borne over many trips to make it to her destination. She has worn a path through the city.

Phoenix is aware that country clothes are inappropriate in the city. The woman carrying presents again contrasts to Phoenix’s own poverty. The image of the woman tying Phoenix’s shoes echoes Mary Magdalene washing Christ’s feet. Yet the (almost certainly white) woman acts not with pure generosity, but rather with a kind of arrogant gruffness, ordering Phoenix to “stand still then.” Phoenix, though, seems not to register the woman’s implied sense of superiority. Phoenix’s own dignity outweighs the slight in the other woman’s gruffness.

Once again Phoenix’s body knows where it ‘s going—it’s as if she’s “worn” this path into her bones. The document is a diploma. That it matches her “dream” suggests two things: that she treasures the knowledge it implies as something that can help her; but also that she treasures that knowledge, which she never had the chance to attain, for its own sake and as a possibility for her descendants. “Here I be” is an assertion of her success in making this difficult journey, and more broadly her right to be there.

Yet Phoenix is immediately, and once again, accosted by a condescending figure of white authority. Even the more understanding nurse gets frustrated with her, and the nurse’s comment about Phoenix taking up their time indicates her sense of her own importance relative to Phoenix’s. The nurse’s comments also finally reveal to the reader what has been withheld: Phoenix’s motivation for her journey. Phoenix’s silence is at first perplexing, but her explanation suggests that it’s a product of her total exhaustion—this journey was profoundly difficult for her. And now it’s clear why she made such a difficult journey: for love of her grandson.

The nurse is both condescending in the way she talks and blunt in her assessment of the boy’s future. Yet Phoenix is optimistic and talks about her grandson in terms of perseverance – he is “going to last.” Phoenix’s assertion of her grandson’s primacy in God’s existence suggests her feeling of her own and her grandson’s self-worth as individuals.

The free medicine exists both as charity and imposition, showing the city to be a place of nominal caring but also a place of harshness and practicality. She can have the medicine for free, but no one’s going to go to the effort to bring it to her. The attendant’s charity must also be seen in concert with her earlier rudeness – she seems to be giving because that’s what you do at Christmas, not because she cares. Phoenix has enough dignity to both name the terms of the amount, and to accept the charity without self-denigration.

The cane’s tap announces Phoenix’s newfound if minimal economic power, and she suddenly revises, or perhaps augments, the aim of her journey, though still in the name of her love. She will purchase for her grandson something that will show her love for him and broaden his world, make him see what’s possible. The gift is something that harnesses nature into both energy and beauty—it is something that represents hope, that maybe, just maybe, will help spur her grandson to push on and extend the worn path a little farther. These are just Phoenix’s hopes and dreams, of course, and given her grandson’s injury they are as fragile as the paper windmill, but now it is clear that these dreams are what fueled her journey and her dignity, are what drives her to keep wearing down her path. And she has traveled extremely far: Phoenix was born a slave, after all, but now as she heads back home she is lifting her “free hand.”