"The Naturals: Eudora Welty," in Savages and Naturals: Black Portraits by White Writers in Modern American Literature, University of Delaware Press, 1982, pp. 129-37.

In the following excerpt, Cooley examines Welty's portrayal of Phoenix Jackson and argues that "what is ultimately so disturbing about 'A Worn Path' is its very innocence and beauty. "

"A Worn Path" has received a fair amount of critical attention, most of it presuming that Eudora Welty intended her protagonist, Aunt Phoenix Jackson, to be "a symbol of the immortality of the Negro's spirit of endurance," as Alfred Appel puts it [in A Season of Dreams: The Fiction of Eudora Welty, 1965]. The name Aunt Phoenix and the events of the story appear to parallel the legend of the Phoenix, thereby suggesting new life for the aged black woman. Neil Isaacs has suggested [in "Life for Phoenix," Sewanee Review, Vol. 71, 1963] that Phoenix's ailing grandson, to whom...