A Worn Path: Quotes that Reveal Setting

It was December—a bright frozen day in the early morning. Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied in a red rag, coming along a path through the pinewoods.

The first lines of “A Worn Path” determine the setting and immediately establish that the terrain is difficult. The day is “frozen,” suggesting it is inhospitable for traveling and even the “brightness” cultivates the idea that there is something unforgiving about where the story takes place, as there is nowhere to rest tired eyes. The phrase “far out in the country” suggests that the old woman is far from anywhere else, which contributes to the sense that Phoenix is very much alone on her journey.

Quote 2

So she left that tree, and had to go through a barbed-wire fence. There she had to creep and crawl, spreading her knees and stretching her fingers like a baby trying to climb the steps. But she talked loudly to herself: she could not let her dress be torn now, so late in the day, and she could not pay for having her arm or her leg sawed off ...

After facing the thorny bush and making the difficult passage over the creek, Phoenix faces a barbed wire fence. The fence appears rather abruptly in the story, immediately on the heels of other obstacles and hard aspects of the terrain. Imagining an old woman, unsteady on her feet and with failing eyesight, being forced to crawl on her hands and knees like a baby is simultaneously disturbing and impressive. It’s a wonder that she’s able to accomplish this punishing task and a travesty that she is required to. She is aware throughout the entire task of what she could lose, from her clothes to her limbs, yet she continues on nonetheless.

Quote 3

Walk pretty,' she said. 'This the easy place. This the easy going.' She followed the track, swaying through the quiet bare fields, through the little strings of trees silver in their dead leaves, past cabins silver from weather, with the doors and windows boarded shut, all like old women under a spell sitting there.

In contrast to much of the rest of the terrain that Phoenix encounters, this part of her journey brings a respite, suggesting that the land contains some moments of relief. These descriptions are some of the first in the story that provide a sense of the humble beauty of the terrain Phoenix travels, but that beauty is not without its heaviness, as the aged and boarded-up cabins are evocative of poverty and disuse. The simile comparing the cabins to “old women under a spell sitting there” parallels Phoenix sitting by the creek in her reverie about marble-cake.

Previous section Quotes by Theme