A Very Curious Path

In Eudora Welty's A Worn Path, the plot follows the interesting journey of a quirky old woman.  It starts out almost humorously, presenting the image a woman with a cane wandering through a mysterious forest.  This woman frequently speaks to herself as she progresses, making jokes about various things and recounting events that had happened in a certain spot.  The mental stability of this woman is called into question various times, the first of which is when she first stops to take a rest.  She observes a "little boy [bringing] her a plate with a slice of marble-cake on it... "That would be acceptable," she said.  But when she went to take it there was just her own hand in the air," (Welty).  She goes onto to have another interaction like this, where she falls and sticks her hand in the air, expecting somebody to help her to her feet.  As she arrives into town and moves toward her destination, a new question is introduced.  She goes to a hospital or doctor's office to get medicine for her grandson, whose throat is not well.  Some of her comments, along with the disturbing fact that he swallowed lye as a child, lead the reader to think the grandson may have died, and the grandma is not over it yet.  But the focus of the story is not if the grandson is deceased, it is the amount of hardship Phoenix is willing to take in order to take care of him.  She never once hesitates or thinks about no completing her task, because to her its just something that comes with loving her grandson.