A Worn Path by Eudora Welty is a story describing the long, exhaustive journey of a frail Negro woman named Phoenix Jackson. On her trip, she walked a long distance from the mountains to the city called Old Natchez Trace and met different people as well as faced different intrinsic struggles.
The story taught us that in a journey, there will be circumstances, controlled or uncontrolled, that will either hinder or support us to reach our destination. In the case of Phoenix, she faced internal struggles where she felt that she had chains on her feet or something in the mountains plead her to stay. She also met other people advising her to go back and discontinue her walk because the path is tiring. Despite these, Phoenix kept on moving forward aiming to reach Old Natchez Trace where she will directly visit its clinic to have a throat medication for her young grandson. With all these textual evidences, we can infer that her travel depicts the process of success. To achieve success, we must set off in a long, tiring path and face struggles but must be able to decide to go further in order to go at our desired destination, hence, reaching our success.
Phoenix Jackson also experienced racial discrimination. In the story, a man called her old colored people which is a strong expression to someone of different race, in this case, Negro. Relating this situation in real life and in the context of achieving success, we may reflect on it as encountering various people along our journey to success who will find flaw or fault in us to break us and be demotivated along our journey. The man, after calling Phoenix old colored people, strongly advised her to go back where she came from; however, Phoenix decided to move forward. With this, Phoenix showed to us that no matter what other people prefer to call us, we must embrace our flaws and respect ourselves in order to not be affected on what they say; thus, their bad mouthing will be of no use for us to be demotivated, instead let their bad mouthing be another source of fuel to keep the fire burning.
Generally, A Worn Path tells us the story of Phoenix Jackson, encouraging everyone to be a phoenix when attaining their success—rise from the ashes and fly wherever it desires.
Tags: A Worn Path, Eudora Welty, literature, story review, themes and symbolism, modern relevance, LifeThinker.
