Edward P. Jones’s “The First Day” is told from the perspective of a little girl on her first day of school. Even in the first sentence, Jones’s use of perspective takes the reader on an incredible journey through this little girl’s life without any change in tense. The first sentence is the story’s equivalent to a broken part of a treasure map and the guiding sense of what is to come: “…long before I learned to be ashamed of my mother…” (Jones 349.) Everything that follows this fateful sentence is a flashback. It is very baffling as to why the author chooses to continue in present tense as if it is not a flashback at all. After all, that seemingly “unremarkable morning” is somehow captured in such tense and vivid detail for an event that happened so long ago, according to the narrator. (Jones 349). While I personally am rather confused by this effort to blur the lines between past and present, maybe that is something in of itself. Having encountered the story in present tense, we are drawn to relive this story with the narrator in a way that could not have been achievable otherwise. Perhaps this day was so important to this girl that to explain it in any other manner would not have been conducive to her storytelling. Would we be filled with such a feeling of impending sympathy if we did not imagine this little girl, telling us herself that her little black shoes fill her with such joy and that soon that joy will come to an end?
We never actually finish the walk with this unnamed girl through the entirety of her first day, but we don’t have to. If this story were told in past tense, the ending might leave the reader with the impression that the story is incomplete; but in fact, it isn’t. “I can still hear my mother’s footsteps above it all” (Jones 352). This sentence gives us the perfect ending to a continuing story. The fact that the girl is listening attentively in this moment, right now, as you are reading this post, we can grasp a better understanding of how strong our girl’s feeling are towards her mother, whatever those may be.
The tense the story was told in was one of the first things that popped out to me. I thought it had been interesting, like you said, to walk through the day with this little girl, taking note of every little thing this girl noticed. I normally struggle with the blurred lines between what is past and what is not, but I think this time I read the blurs more as commentary–possibly. When I read it in such ways, it made me wonder things like, “Well, is that going to happen?” and then never really saw it–I can only assume it did, the way she learned to be ashamed of her mother.
I believed the blurred line of time contributed a sort of out of body experience while reading this story. It made the narrative take place in a subset of time that felt unexplored and ambiguous. I enjoyed this sort of disconnect quite a bit throughout the story and believe it gave the story an unreliable and fantastical representation.
My interpretation as to why the author chose to use past tense was to have the narrator maintain an naive quality in describing the events that happened. The content of the story does cover series themes such as poverty and its effect on education but the child nator is of course unaware of the real reasoning behind her journey. I appeactire the authors’ choice to do this because it highlights how children affected by a lack of education are often aware of the seriousness of their situation. If it had been in present tense it might not have had the personal quality.
When the author says that “long before she was ashamed of her mother,” we can make inferences as to what exactly she is ashamed of about her mother. One of the strongest clues to this is the possibility that her mother cannot read or write. It brings shame on the mom and it probably also has led to assumptions made later in life that the daughter could not read as well.