In these stories, Welty looks at the state of Mississippi through the eyes of its inhabitants, the common people, both black and white, and presents a realistic view of the racial relations that existed at the time.

Welty writes "A Worn Path" to show the reader that even though they are not an epic hero they can still have dignity in their life.

Marianne Hauser, reviewing the book for The New York Times on November 18, 1941, praises "the author's fanatic love of people.

With a few lines she draws the gesture of a deaf-mute, the windblown skirts of a Negro woman in the fields, the bewilderment of a child in the sickroom of an old people's asylum--and she has told more than many an author might tell in a novel of six hundred pages".

[1] Katherine Anne Porter, who wrote the book's Introduction, said: These stories offer an extraordinary range of mood, pace, tone, and variety of material.