Precious little background is given for Phoenix. The story focuses more on her task and how she triumphs over the obstacles that threaten to obstruct and stop her. Beyond a description of her physical appearance, readers receive few basic facts about her personal history: She is quite old and lived through the Civil War; she never received a formal education; and she lives with her grandson in a house on the Natchez Trace, an old forest trail that extends through Mississippi.

Phoenix is a frail, elderly woman with failing eyesight, but she is described in heroic and mythic terms. She is named after the mythological phoenix bird, and her aged yet vibrant appearance has deep connotations:

Her eyes were blue with age. Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath, and the two knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow burning under the dark. Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and with an odor like copper. (142)

Phoenix is not merely an old woman with the typical physical characteristics of the elderly; her wizened face is like a tree, symbolizing life and wisdom.