“A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty is a short story about an old lady named Phoenix on a journey down a worn path, testing the limits of her old body, to retrieve medicine for sick grandson. The angle that I have chosen to showcase is her use of vivid imagery and symbolism throughout the entirety of the piece. Her use of imagery was one of the first things that I noticed about her work when I began reading and I knew that it would be vital to the message of the piece because it is so nature oriented. The author really describes the scenery of every part of her journey that she faces so that the reader feels like they’re actually there experiencing, feeling, and touching, just like Phoenix is. One of the main symbols in the story are trees. Welty begins the introduction of her symbol when describing Phoenix’s face in the second paragraph when she describes her skin as having “a pattern all its own numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath, and the two knobs of her cheeks were illuminated by a yellow burning under the dark.” Although this doesn’t offer much insight (besides another example of imagery to add to your mental image), different types of trees are a common reoccurrence all throughout the piece- trees are usually symbols of life and life cycles (the good, the bad, growth, etc.)