Phoenix is next described as wearing a “red rag” on her head and having untied shoelaces (265). Welty is referencing that she had escaped from a rison like atmosphere and is now starting out on her path to freedom. Her striped dress creates an image of her wearing a black and white prison uniform. The apron suggests that she was previously working as some type of pheasant or slave. When we are introduced to the main character she is wearing a long apron and a striped dress that reaches her ankles. Phoenix Jackson’s appearance was another clear indication that race and racism are being portrayed. Once again, a subtle reference to slavery that Welty uses. When this story took place, it was primarily African Americans who worked in cotton fields. One last symbol in the path was the cotton field that Phoenix had passed by. This could be a description of the Underground Railroad, being cave-like. There was also a part of the path that was described as “overhead the live-oaks met, and it was as dark as a cave” (267). The fact that chains were used to describe her struggle up the hill is a clear indication that slaves were being referenced in this passage. At one point the old woman has to climb a massive hill, in which she describes her climb as feeling like there are chains at her ankles. They had to face many problems and hardships along the way, which Welty displays by creating obstacles Phoenix has to endure. The path represents the roads that they had to walk on to escape from their owners to gain freedom.
Phoenix decides that she will buy her grandson a paper windmill to bring home to him along with the medicine.The path itself and the challenges old Phoenix faces on her journey into town is used to create a picture of what slaves went through in the south when this story took place. Even though she doesn't think it will help, the nurse gives Phoenix medicine for her grandson's throat, and the attendant gives Phoenix a nickel in the spirit of Christmas. Luckily, a nurse recognizes Phoenix right away as a grandmother who makes the long trip into the city frequently in order to get medicine for her grandson who is sick with lye poisoning. Phoenix asks one of these people to tie her shoes, and then Phoenix climbs the steps to a big building and enters a doctor's office where she is greeted by a less-than-friendly attendant.
The path gives way to town, which is decorated for Christmas and filled with people bustling by Phoenix as they go about their business. As the two part ways, the hunter advises Phoenix to go home, but she insists on continuing her journey. He sets his own dog off to attack the black dog, and he points his gun directly at Phoenix, which he thinks is really funny. The hunter and Phoenix chat, mostly about her age and where she is going, which makes him seem nice enough, but he's really pretty much a jerk.
One of these animals, a black dog, bowls her over, leaving her lying in a ditch for a while until a hunter, a young white man with a dog of his own chained by his side, stops to help her up. Some of these are real others are daydreams, memories, or tricks of the eye. She encounters animals and people along her way, too. She traverses different kinds of terrain-hills, forests, swamps, and fields-that test the strength and endurance of her old body. On a cold December day, an elderly woman named Phoenix Jackson makes her way along a remote path, narrating the journey to herself as she goes.
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