SOURCE: "Life for Phoenix," in Sewanee Review, Vol. LXXI, No. 1, Winter, 1963, pp. 75-81.

In the following essay, Isaacs examines how plot, setting, and Christian motifs contribute to multiple layers of meaning in "A Worn Path. "

The first four sentences of "A Worn Path" contain simple declarative statements using the simple past of the verb "to be": "It was December . . . , " " . . . there was an old Negro woman . . . ," "Her name was Phoenix Jackson," "She was very old and small. . . ." The note of simplicity thus struck is the keynote of Eudora Welty's artistic design in the story. For it is a simple story (a common reaction is "simply beautiful"). But it is also a story which employs many of the devices which can make of the modern short story an intricate and densely complex form. It uses them, however, in such a way that it demonstrates how a single meaning may be...