Race
As Phoenix makes her trek across that worn path, she comes across a variety of other characters, many of them white and many of them manifesting signs of systemic racism. When racism is allowed to fester long enough to become a system by which everyday life is lived, it does not always take the hideous form easily recognized by outsiders. Slavery is over, but Jim Crow has taken its place and is nearly as insidious. The story reveals the often contradictory nature of those adopting the codes of such a system such as the hunter helpfully assisting Phoenix in a kindly manner one minute and then threateningly pointing his gun at her the next, or the women at the doctor's office giving her the medicine but speaking to her as if she is stupid. The manner in which she is treated once she arrives at her destination would be a familiar example of racist behavior to anyone raised in the South prior to the Civil Rights Movement and for some time afterward.
Tenacity
Phoenix is one of the most tenacious and committed characters in Welty's oeuvre, if not American fiction. This isn't even the only instance in which she has made this journey and it does not get any easier; in fact, with every passing day it gets harder. She never considers turning around and going back and she does not indicate any glimmer of feeling sorry for herself for having to do it. The people she encounters have very little idea about what she's gone through to get here, or, if they do, how their behavior towards her might minimize her heroism or exacerbate her troubles.
Endurance
The struggle through the prickly system of racism that Phoenix must navigate with care while also refusing to sacrifice her dignity becomes an allegorical tale of endurance for African Americans. Phoenix is old enough to have lived through the end of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the implementation of Jim Crow. She stands in for African Americans who have seen their lives and liberty callously disregarded in one form or another. One should not construe Phoenix as a paragon of virtue or perfection, though; she is a nuanced character and not the stereotypical, long-suffering black hero or heroine. Yet her journey is significant allegorically because it is a journey of obstacles, of threats, of the need to conjure up will and courage. The end isn't entirely pleasant, either (Natchez presents new types of obstacles), but there is still something worth fighting for (Phoenix's grandson, or the larger goal of carving out a life of dignity and meaning in an often cruel country).
