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education work so hard and overcome multiple obstacles to make sure her daughter is
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enrolled in school? A possible interpretation could be that the people who best understand
the importance of an education are those who didn’t have the benefit of one.
Point of view can often be a difficult angle to analyze and interpret, but in this story,
it is especially interesting. The narrator is the daughter, yet she recalls the incident
from the vantage point of adulthood. We learn some details about how the daughter’s
understanding of her mother has changed over the years, and we also know quite a
DIFFERENTIATION bit about the daughter’s understanding of her mother at the time. Consider how your
Connections to Self knowledge of your own parents’ strength and fallibility has changed as you’ve grown
Analyzing Short Fiction
up. As you experienced people outside of your family and became part of the larger
Ask students reread this sentence: world, you likely began to see your parents as humans capable of imperfection. This
“Consider how your knowledge of your
© Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Do not distribute.
own parents’ strength and fallibility has brings us to a more specific aspect of the narrator’s point of view. She says that these
changed as you’ve grown up.” Then, ask events occurred “long before [she] learned to be ashamed of [her] mother” (par. 1). The
students to write a journal entry in which word “learned” seems significant, given this story’s focus on formal education. We think
they respond to this statement. Ask them of education as being “book learning,” but it’s clear that some part of the narrator’s
to specifically articulate the contrasts education eventually involves “learning” to be ashamed of her mother. Yet as she’s
between the stages using a simple telling this story, she does not seem ashamed; she seems proud of her mother’s heroic
structure: “My knowledge of my own journey, proud that her mother overcame so many obstacles in order to make sure her
parents’ strength and fallibility used to be daughter had a bright future. So one interpretation of “The First Day” might be that the
[xxxxx] due to [some evidence]. However, story illustrates how our perspectives of our parents’ identities change over time and
due to [some catalyzing event], I perceive shape our appreciation for the sacrifices they make. Only later in life can we fully reflect
them to be [xxxxx].” upon all the things our parents have done on our behalf.
As you can see, an interpretation of a text moves beyond an understanding of what
happens in the story to draw conclusions about the real world. “The First Day,” for
example, suggests something about the role of education in our lives that goes beyond
this particular five-year-old’s first day in kindergarten. Isn’t this story really about the role
education can play in parent-child relationships and about the opportunities and
experiences children might have that their parents did not have? Maybe Jones is asking
us to think about what happened later in the narrator’s life as she aged, was successful
at school, and went on to college. Her mother may be one hundred percent supportive of
her daughter’s education. Yet as the daughter’s experiences diverge from those of her
mother, those very opportunities can divide and separate the two. The narrator looks
back with obvious love and appreciation for her mother, but Jones does not give us the
story of what took place between “the first day” and the point from which the narrator
remembers it. Recall, however, that the daughter tells us that this “first day” is not just
about school—it’s also a day she views in relation to her own perception of her mother,
who she later “learn[s]” to be “ashamed” of. Perhaps the narrator’s education began not
just with her first day at school but also this first day of experiencing her mother’s
infallibility and her own first sense of shame. In looking back, the daughter also realizes
so much more about the bravery and love in her mother’s actions on the first day of
school. In revealing her inability to read and in facing public humiliation, her mother
ensures that the daughter doesn’t ever have to be similarly dependent on others.
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DIFFERENTIATION
Connections to Texts
Ask students to use the following observation
as a model for a new paragraph they will
write: “In looking back, the daughter also
realizes so much more about the bravery and
love in her mother’s actions on the first day
of school. In revealing her inability to read
and in facing public humiliation, her mother
ensures that the daughter doesn’t ever have
to be similarly dependent on others.” Ask
students to write a paragraph that has a
defensible claim and evidence to support
that claim in which they identify the diction,
imagery, and details that contribute to the
complex emotional attitude of the narrator in
the previous Round House excerpt.

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