She explains, “And though I did not take these pictures to prove anything, I think they most assuredly do show something-which is to make a far better claim for them” ( Eye 354). Unlike many writers and photographers of her time-for example, Margaret Bourke-White and Doris Ulmann-Welty was not on a Depression era crusade (Black 35), although she is clearly sympathetic to the people whose images she snaps. Traveling throughout her native state as a junior publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, camera in hand, Welty observed the lives of rural people closely and took photographs depicting black life, including several that portray images of women like Phoenix Jackson. The child’s condition is something Welty obviously understood, as her story and its allusions to medicine clearly show. How accurately does “A Worn Path” reflect conditions of the poor of Welty’s time and place, and from where does she draw inspiration for this tale?
When was it?-January-two-three years ago-” (178). The doctor’s office that Phoenix returns to “like clockwork” confirms this: “Yes. The story is predicated on the unfortunate circumstance that the boy’s throat periodically becomes swollen because he accidentally swallowed lye.
Written, apparently, in 1940, and published in 1941, it is a short story about Phoenix Jackson, an elderly grandmother who undertakes a heroic journey into town to procure free “charity case” medicine for her grandson’s throat (177–78). Eudora Welty’s sensitivity to words and images in rural Mississippi during the late 1930s are often reflected in her writings and photographs (Barilleaux 21).