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Section 1 Wby retelling the plot in our own words. After all, who doesn’t enjoy a good
hen someone asks us about a short story, novel, or play, we usually describe it
page-turner? But the way the author tells the story and the ideas the story explores
are often just as important as what happens in it. In these stories, events may occur
because of internal conflicts within a character or external conflicts between characters
or between a character and other forces, such as those found in nature. Particular
settings also influence both events and conflicts in different ways. As readers, we pick
up on all of these details to help us understand characters’ relationships with each
other and with the environment around them. We also experience the story’s characters,
© Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Do not distribute.
setting, and plot through a narrator’s point of view, and both the narrator and the
characters within the story have their own perspectives and understanding of the world
around them.

Elements of Fiction

DIFFERENTIATION By studying how these literary elements work individually and together, we begin to
understand how they shape readers’ interpretations of a story’s meaning. To explore
Connections to Self these elements, let’s take a look at the short story “The First Day” by Edward P. Jones.
Often the theme of short stories, poems, As you read, notice the ways the characters respond to the changes in the setting, think
and longer works of fiction can be found about how the plot introduces and resolves the conflicts characters experience, and
in the title. In this bildungsroman, the consider the narrator’s role in the story.
daughter experiences many “firsts.” You
may wish to ask students to share their
“firsts” in either small groups or the entire The First Day
class. Examples might include first days of
school, first jobs, first dates, etc. You may Edward P. Jones
wish to ask students how they felt about
these “firsts” and perhaps guide them On an otherwise unremarkable September now and I will reach for it time and time again
toward articulating their range of emotions. morning, long before I learned to be ashamed of before the morning ends. All the plaits, each
my mother, she takes my hand and we set off with a blue barrette near the tip and each
down New Jersey Avenue to begin my very first twisted into an uncommon sturdiness, will last
day of school. I am wearing a checkeredlike until I go to bed that night, something that has
DIFFERENTIATION blue-and-green cotton dress, and scattered never happened before. My stomach is full of
Inquiry about these colors are bits of yellow and white milk and oatmeal sweetened with brown sugar.
and brown. My mother has uncharacteristically Like everything else I have on, my pale green
Seasons are often used to signal ritualistic spent nearly an hour on my hair that morning, slip and underwear are new, the underwear
passages from one stage of life to another. plaiting and replaiting so that now my scalp having come three to a plastic package with a
You might ask students to research the tingles. Whenever I turn my head quickly, my little girl on the front who appears to be dancing.
archetypes of seasons individually or in nose fills with the faint smell of Dixie Peach hair Behind my ears, my mother, to stop my whining,
small groups. If you use Thomas Foster’s grease. The smell is somehow a soothing one has dabbed the stingiest bit of her gardenia
How to Read Literature Like a Professor,
you might ask students to read the chapter
titled “It’s More Than Just Rain or Snow.” 2
You may wish to ask students to apply
that knowledge to develop a greater
understanding of the significance of the
daughter’s “first day.”
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CLOSE READING CLOSE READING
Researchers say that the sense of smell is The daughter is very specific about the
closely linked to memories, and the daughter colors, patterns, and design of her clothing.
claims that the Dixie Peach pomade connects You might ask students how the specific
her to the past and present. Because smells details and the clothing itself emphasize the
or scents can trigger long-forgotten events values of the daughter and mother. Addi-
or experiences, the daughter’s reliability as tionally, you might ask students to further
a narrator may be more believable. You may explore these values by analyzing them
wish to ask students to track the signifi- through anthropologist Edward T. Hall’s
cance of scent and the associated memories Iceberg Concept of Culture. PBS Learning
throughout the passage. Students can learn provides an excellent graphic, which you can
more about the connection between scent find on their website (pbslearningmedia.org)
and memory from the article “Psychology and by searching “Iceberg Concept of Culture.”
Smell” on the Fifth Sense website (fifthsense For example, “dress” might be on the surface
.org.uk). level, but on the deeper, subconscious levels,
it may represent “concepts of cleanliness”
and “concepts of self.”

2 chapter 1 / Analyzing Short Fiction

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