In Eudora Welty's short story "A Worn Path" we are introduced to the main protagonist, Phoenix Jackson. She is "an old Negro woman" that shows great courage going to town through the woods to get medicine for her grandson. This quality is shown in her strength to overcome a physical obstacle such as the creek, the psychological barriers such as when she "meets" the ghost, and the contrast with the hunter.
When she gets to the creek, she is scared, but ready to face the difficulty of it: "Now comes the trial", she says. Phoenix knows the territory well, and she is used to this kind of trial. She will not let this obstacle stop her whole journey; she gathers her courage and "Putting her right foot out, she mounted the log and shut her eyes she opened her eyes and she was safe on the other side." By closing her eyes and trusting her senses, she gets to the other side of the creek very easily. But when she has time to relax her nerves, she says: "I wasn't as old as I thought." Here we see that the thing she was afraid of, was more her misjudgment of her capacities, and that because this is a usual path, she knows right away how to overcome the difficulties.
She is very courageous because she can overcome some very harsh psychological realities because she can make of her fear her strenth. She goes on and walking in a field of dead corn, she begins to see a "tall, black, and skinny . . . moving before her" on the horizon. She tries to guess who or what it is and at the second trial, she begins thinking that the thing is a ghost. We can see that she is very scared when she says "Ghost" "sharply". This last word stresses the fear of the old lady, because, as we know, when we are afraid, we respond instinctively, and this "shout" can be interpreted as a perfect example of loss of rationality. She then asks: "Who be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary death close by." Here we notice that for the second time she tries to repress her fear and tries to act rationally attempting to check if the ghost was a "bad" one.
