Nothing Happens in Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path”

As I was organizing my American literature survey course this semester, I knew that I wanted to center it on short stories. I did this because I wanted to provide students with a broad swath of literature and literary movements from 1865 to the present. With this in mind, I knew, as well, that I wanted to include Ernest Gaines’ “The Sky is Gray,” because, like many, I consider it an important example of the short story form. Since I wanted to include Gaines’ story, I thought backwards to how to lead up to “The Sky is Gray” in class, and I decided to assign William Faulkner’s “Dry September” and Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path.” Gaines mentions both Faulkner and Welty as influences, so I wanted to have students think about paths of influence.

In comments about writing his short story collection Bloodline, Gaines says, “I always knew what I wanted to do. I had to find a way in which to do it. For example, before I wrote ‘The Sky is Gray,’ I had to read Eudora Welty. I was assigned once to read ‘A Worn Path,’ and I thought, ‘This is a great story.’ I read ‘A Worn Path’ at least ten years before I wrote ‘The Sky is Gray.’” I don’t want to focus on the connections between Gaines’ and Welty’s story; instead, I want to look at Welty’s story on its own, and specifically in relation to the way some of my students viewed the story after they initially read it.