The stories meld together into a long history of oppression. Slave ships
transport thousands of Africans from the Gold Coast into America's grip,
callously beginning black America's racial saga. Laborers collapse after
hours of shredding their fingers on cotton plants. Sobbing mothers tenderly
clean up the flesh that cat-o-nine tails ripped off their child's back.
America eventually witnesses the Emancipation of slaves, and even relative
"equality," but an African American's obstacles will never completely subside.
Eudora Welty, in her short story "A Worn Path," symbolically illustrates
the hurdles that African Americans face: hurdles that white Americans never
had to face. Welty symbolically shows, through the perseverance of an aging
black woman, that African Americans can and must conquer these unjust obstacles
in order to complete the path to racial equality.
In each of the roadblocks that she encounters, the protagonist Phoenix
Jackson metaphorically confronts the underlying struggles African Americans
face. While traveling to town to acquire medicine for her grandson, Phoenix
must untangle her dress from a thorny bush. She must climb through
a barbed-wire fence. She gets knocked into a ditch by a loose dog.
She faces the barrel of a white man's gun. Though these events could have
happened to anyone, Welty intends to allude to racism. The hunter
would have helped Phoenix, were she white, to her destination. The attendant
at the health clinic would have addressed her more respectfully than "Speak
up, Grandma... Are you deaf?" (Welty 97). And were she white, she would
not be facing these trials alone; someone would have joined her on the
journey or simply gone to get the medicine for her. Each of these events,
though, represents a larger scope: an unkind racial slur, a separate and
run-down restroom, or a hateful stare, humbling a colored person to hang
his head in shame.
Instead of being accompanied on the road, as an elderly person deserves,
Phoenix must deal with her problems herself. In depicting Phoenix's perseverance
for her grandson, Welty demonstrates the importance of combatting racism.
The grandson represents the younger generation, the generation worth sacrificing
for. Welty recognizes that the path to equality will be hard: "Seem
like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far... Something always
take a hold of me on this hill? pleads I should stay" (94). Phoenix faces
tests like crossing the log above the stream and getting past memories
of bulls and two-headed snakes. But in the end, the reader sees just how
precious her final destination is. For just as the grandson wrapped up
in the patch quilt at home moves Phoenix to journey all the way to town,
the sweet taste of equality should motivate black people to persevere through
their unfair obstacles. A worthy goal truly justifies struggling through
a long journey, and Welty implies that fighting racism is just as important
as keeping a suffering grandchild alive.
In her symbolism, Welty demonstrates exactly why racial equality
is so important. African Americans slaves would toil through each day, wondering
if they would still be alive at dusk. Phoenix similarly trembles in fear
at the thought of an approaching ghost. "'Ghost,' she said sharply, 'who
be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary death close by'" (95). Slave
mothers would likely show the same wary fear as they watched the shadows
returning from the fields, asking "Is my child still alive? Will
he make it through the night?" And as Phoenix stares down the cold barrel
of the hunter's gun, she surprisingly shows no fear. This unusual courage
alludes to just how deeply racism has stretched. A human being would understandably
show fear when facing a gun, but to confront danger so nonchalantly simply
defies human nature. But after years and years of white people captivating
them as savages, black Americans eventually learned to face persecution
head-on. They grew to expect it, doing so even today, and learned
to say prayers of thanks after simply making it through each day. "'Doesn't
the gun scare you?' [the hunter] said, still pointing it. 'No, sir, I seen
plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done'" (97).
Through these conflicts in her story, Welty demonstrates racism's perversion,
that African Americans must struggle to better their human status.
As Phoenix continues on her journey, despite her odds as an elderly black
woman, African Americans must also continue on toward sweet equality.
The short story "A Worn Path" depicts through both symbolism and
perseverance, the obstacles that African Americans face on their path to
racial equality. Because she travels as a black woman, Phoenix encounters
hurdles that an elderly white woman would likely bypass. Though Phoenix
exhibits enough willpower and strength to overcome such adversity, Welty
hints to the reader that this woman should not have to face this journey
as she did. In radiating determination, Phoenix actually compels the reader
to renounce racism, and to see just how important this struggle for equality
is; just as a loving parent would endure through any obstacle for his or
her child, so must African Americans persist to attain equality.
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