Death is not something to be feared, but faced with awe. Although, by nature, aging and death are merely facts of life; a loss of hope, the frustration of all aspirations, a leap into a great darkness, and the feelings of fear and anguish. Phoneix Jackson of Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path" and Granny of Katherine Anne Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" face these inevitable signs of aging and death.Phoenix Jackson, an old Negro lady, haltingly struggles with her age while walking through the woods and fields on her way to town. "Seem like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far." Phoenix Jackson walks a worn path and overcomes obstacles and adversity to reach her goal. "She carried a thin, small cane made from an umbrella, and with this she kept tapping the frozen earth in front of her." The fact that she kept persistently tapping the earth in front of her could only indicate that she was visually impaired. She may not have been completely blind, but she had to have been substantially impaired to keep tapping her cane in a redundant manner. "But she sat down to rest She did not dare to close her eyes and when a little boy brought her a plate with a slice of marble cake on it she spoke to him. "That would be acceptable," she said. But when she went to take it there was just her own hand in the air." This was just one out of many instances in the story where Phoenix talked to herself and had hallucinations. Talking to ones self in the forest is a definite sign of senility. Phoenix did not allow her disabilities to get in her way. Her memory fails her when she forgets the purpose of her nature walk. "My senses is gone. I too old, I the oldest people I ever know." As a dying person, Granny Weatherall is losing her powers of deliberate control over events, which she has evidently learned to master along with the various disappointments that life has dealt her but is also subject to a number of intense anxieties. "While ...
