The inspiration for Eudora Welty’s character Phoenix Jackson came from an “ancient black woman whom [Welty] saw walking across the countryside… near the Natchez Trace…” (Barnhisel 11). Welty wrote “A Worn Path” as soon as she got home that day; she felt that the woman she met was on “a purposeful, measured journey…” (Barnhisel 11). She grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. Her childhood in the South influenced her to set a lot of her stories in the American South. In addition, many of her stories reflected the South’s language and culture. For instance, many of her “... works are largely Mississippian in setting and atmosphere…” ("Eudora Alice Welty" 1). Eudora Welty’s short story “A Worn Path” tells the journey of an old, black woman named Phoenix