Phoenix heard the dogs fighting, and heard the man running and throwing sticks. She even heard a gunshot. But she was slowly bending forward by that time, further and further forward, the lids stretched down over her eyes, as if she were doing this in her sleep. Her chin was lowered almost to her knees. The yellow palm of her hand came out from the fold of her apron. Her fingers slid down and along the ground under the piece of money with the grace and care they would have in lifting an egg from under a setting hen. Then she slowly straightened up; she stood erect, and the nickel was in her apron pocket. A bird flew by. Her lips moved. "God watching me the whole time. I come to stealing."

The man came back, and his own dog panted about them. "Well, I scared him off that time," he said, and then he laughed and lifted his gun and pointed it at Phoenix.

She stood straight and faced him.

"Doesn't the gun scare you?" he said, still pointing it.

"No, sir, I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done," she said, holding utterly still.

He smiled, and shouldered the gun. "Well, Granny," he said, "you must be a hundred years old, and scared of nothing. I'd give you a dime if I had any money with me. But you take my advice and stay home, and nothing will happen to you." ("A Worn Path")

Basic set up:

Phoenix, the old African American grandma who is the protagonist of Welty's short story "A Worn Path," is stopped on her way to town by a white man.

The violence in the above passage isn't as extreme as the violence in Faulkner's Light in August. The white guy points his gun at the old black lady, tries to scare her, and then lowers his gun. We're relieved that he doesn't actually kill her, but would we have been totally surprised if he had?

The point is that even though the white man doesn't actually harm the old lady, he does violence to her. He threatens violence, and the threat of aggression is a kind of violence in and of itself.

This scene highlights the huge disparity in power between the white man and the black woman. Even though the man doesn't actually kill Phoenix, if he had killed her, there would probably have been no consequences for him. He's white, she's black; we're in the Jim Crow South here, after all, and the Jim Crow South wasn't exactly a world of equality and brotherhood.

Welty creates a lot of suspense in this passage. First, she shows us the old woman stealing the nickel that the man's dropped into the grass, so when the man points the gun at her, we think it's in punishment for her theft. But of course it isn't: he hasn't even seen her steal the coin. He's just threatening her for his own amusement.

Welty also conveys a lot in this passage through the back-and-forth exchange between Phoenix and the man. Through dialogue, we get to see Phoenix's courage, for example, and also the man's maliciousness. Welty never has to just come out and tell us what's going on; we can see it for ourselves.