Closer Reading Essay: “A Worn Path”

Maria Victoria DiMario

Prof Pittmann

Ingl 3011-402

31 October 2018

Closer Reading Essay: “A Worn Path”

Passage: “Phoenix spoke unasked now. ‘No, missy, he not dead, he just same. Every little while his throat begin to close up again, and he not able to swallow. He not got his breath. He not able to help himself. So the time come around, and I go on another trip for the soothing medicine’...  ‘My little grandson, he sit up there in the house all wrapped up, waiting by himself,’ Phoenix went on. ‘We is the only two left in the world.’” (Welty, Eudora p. 233)

When reading “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty a second time around an interesting question came to my mind when I got to this part (passage above), is the grandson even alive or is it just Phoenix’s old imagination getting to her so she still feels she has a purpose? The only time Phoenix mentions her grandson is in the waiting room where she doesn’t even seem to remember him at first. When she finally does remember him, she describes what happened and the condition he’s in which doesn’t seem like he’d be okay. Of course, the answer to whether he’s living or not isn’t obvious; Welty makes that clear in her response to the question but she also uses a lot of symbols of death and things throughout the story that more specifically shows the grandson might be dead.

Personally, I think the grandson is alive but only in Phoenix’s mind, in real life he isn’t. Phoenix made this obvious in my opinion by not mentioning him throughout the entire story and then forgetting about him when she was asked. His condition, I believe is also a way to severe for a little boy to survive for so long especially if he’s left alone for such a long time. The answer to whether Phoenix’s grandson is dead or not I think is completely just based off of opinion since Welty tells us there is no actual answer and it is all up to the imagination. If the grandson is dead, or even the idea of him possibly being dead makes the story more interesting and although Welty says it wouldn’t change anything I think it would. It goes from being a grandmother running an errand for her grandchild to a tragedy and seeing that she uses so many symbols of death it seems more like a tragedy

Works Cited

Welty, Eudora. “A Worn Path.” Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, & Sense. By Greg

Johnson, and Thomas R. Arp, 13th edition.  Accessed 29 October 2018.

Welty, Eudora “Is Phoenix Jackson’s Grandson Really Dead?” Critical Inquiry, vol. 1, No. 1

Sep., 1974, p. 219-221.  Accessed 29 October 2018.

Bartel, Roland. “Life and Death  in Eudora Welty’s ‘A Worn Path’.” Studies in Short Fiction.

Vol. 14 Issue 3, 1977, p. 288-290. University of Oregon. Access no. 7150807