First-Person Fiction

Wolff curated a story with a fairly interesting mother son dynamic. At first I was quick to assume that this simple family was nothing more than simple, but it developed into something else. It would be easy to say that the mother suffers from some form of mental illness. Her obsession with her son’s life and perfecting things in one certain way make it appear she could possibly be suffering from OCD. However, as Wolff developed her as a character she rather appeared to be stuck in a different time and in a certain state of denial. Albeit the bear part of the story pinned her as somewhat of a lunatic but this is besides the point. Even though this story is generally brief, Wolff managed to add layers of character development to not only the mother but also the son, and to an extent the father and Dr. Murphy. James, by definition, would be a pathological liar. He lies for no reason and understands this but is not able to stop himself from doing so. Even though this title would be the quick summary as a whole of James’ character, there is still the “something” that I could not place until I finished the entire story.

The father played a significant role by not even being alive for his role to be filled, but the void created by his emptiness is the something that I could not help but latch onto. The father seemed to resonate on the same level as James but in such a way that he passed by as a normal individual. There could have been lying, we as readers wouldn’t know that, but instead we do know that the father was a listener but questioned everything he heard. His development as a character felt as if it was the future for James, not really caring for things other than simple comforts but also maintaining the “lie.”

For James it was real lying, but the lie they lived as a family is what created the story in the first place. The mother lies about living but her actions show denial, Dr. Murphy appears to know what he’s doing but he may be just as clueless as the rest of them. The Liar could truly be anyone of them, or maybe this story isn’t even real. Just another lie created by James, told to some stranger he met on the day.

This story is a reflective piece about a boy who’s life was altered because of his inability to act.

When the story opens, our narrator is a cocky young adult literally looking down on the world as if he owns it. He’s a lifeguard who’s never had to experience the harsh reality that comes with holding life in one’s hands and it utterly unprepared when it finally happens. It’s hilarious in a cosmic sort of way since life has a habit of being like that when one first encounters the real world out of school, and I believe that’s the reason the narrator told this story. While no one typically has to prepare to save someone’s life in their own mundane lives, unexpected things happen and this story just happens to be a worst case scenario situation. This event caused the narrator to change and that’s why he told it.

In a way, one could also argue it’s a story about how life comes at you in unexpected ways. Josh spent all his time up in his booth watching the sea when his trouble originated on land. That could be an argument about why he was so unprepared, but it’s a shallow one to make. Josh was unprepared because he was sure nothing was going to happen just because nothing had in a while and he let himself become complacent in maintaining his training. He maintain his physical form, but that was only to impress people.

In talking about how the story was written, I really enjoyed the twist of the young girl choking on a grape instead of drowning. It subverted the expectations planted by the author when she continuously mentioned drowning and water and riptides and other based dangers. We as readers (and Josh himself) were looking out for water incidents and went along with Josh when he looked for someone drowning and we all were caught off guard when it was shown the little girl was choking instead. It was also well paced and the tension building was worth the pay off. Good story, even upon my second reading.

This story follows Josh Micheals, an eighteen year old lifeguard at the time of the summer, as he recalled his last summer working at Pirate’s Point. He is exceedingly vain and superficial about nearly everyone, including himself, with comments about himself being things like, “I could do no wrong.” (p. 424) and comments about others hardly being any different in their bluntness. All of this was to say that besides his nightmare, Mrs. Lovenheim, and his fixation on Billy Mandel, a kid who was the only one to drown on the beach, he doesn’t delve into any deep sort of thought about his life outside of the beach. Even the mention that his dad died suddenly was brushed aside with a strange impersonality and brashness. 

Josh’s fixation on these matters were the driving factors of this story, and they all play into each other in a surprising way. His nightmare was scarily on-the-nose, and it’s insinuated that in his nightmares that he was in Billy’s place. One minute he was sitting playing with his bucket and shovel on the beach, but behind him the sea loomed and surged. There’s this fear of dying, or rather, having someone die while he’s on duty. He asked out Peggy Mandel, and right after kissing her he abruptly asked her about how Billy died; there was no hint that Peggy would want to talk about this, and yet he selfishly pressed on with the empty excuse that he wanted to do his job better. 

This fixation on drowning, dying, or whatever it may be classified as culminates in the climax of the story where the young daughter of a former lifeguard who was chummy with Josh throughout the story choked on something and was dying. It wasn’t the ocean, but it was the negligence of responsibility from someone (Becky’s father, Ric) who was entrusted to keep these kinds of accidents from happening. There’s an interesting parallel to be drawn from Ric, with both of them being lifeguards who are clearly superficial, who are both content with people at the beach and yet frustrated by the people there, Billy drowning which happened during Ric’s shift, and Becky suffocating under Josh’s watch. Regardless of the foils/parallels between the two of them, Mrs. Lovenheim who Josh had described over and over as watching him ironically was the person to save Becky’s life. This story does extremely well with the principle of Chekhov’s gun, all of the climax was set up and built upon in subtle ways up until they were all woven together in the height of the story.

This story features a lifeguard whose life changed after a fearful event. The narrator, we learn, is Josh Michaels, who counted himself  a strong and handsome lifeguard who watched the people of Pirate’s Point. During the story, he continuously mentions people, like Ric or Mrs. Lovenheim, despite the story relays his growth and personal encounter of a less-than pleasant situation that troubles him to the day he speaks or writes of the event. At the point he relays this story, we realize that he is looking back from many years, so much of the commentary may be realizations he had later in his life that impacts his perspective now.

It appears the narrator is trying to relay a story about the people of Pirate’s point, in their daily lives at the beach, but it seems to be a story of a life-changing event for the narrator — that he has yet to get over. During the course of the story, the narrator misread, mostly, Mrs. Lovenheim; despite having learned of her life and having this feeling that she had always been watching him, he was wrong. It’s as though, he expected her to be like the other teen or young adult women who swooned for him, when in reality Mrs. Lovenheim only tried enjoying her days at the beach. One thing I found interesting is that he states “She never had to ask me to set up her red-and-white umbrella because she always came at the same time each day, so I was ready for her,” (Morris 424) and I feel as though that means with all the speculation he had toward her, he had been the one who’d been fascinated with her, not the other way around.

I think his perspective changed a touch also on the Mandel family. He had heard time and time again the story of the son, Billy, and he provoked Becky to try and tell the story of her brother’s death. He pushed for her to tell, despite she very obviously did not want to speak on it — even though she said she’d only been four, and likely not able to remember details of the event, he pushed her on. It ruined her image of him, and the next time they saw each other, she tried warning a girl of his cold-heartedness, and he verbally attacked Becky — maybe thinking he had been in the right since he tried playing off his curiosity as “needing to know for his job.” Then, the irony, unlike her brother, Becky did not nearly die by the likes of water, but by choking on food instead.

The tone of the story, to me, had been nearly remorseful despite it seemed to be the every day occurrence and once upon a time love of the beach and ocean he was privileged to see every day. The narrator had a dramatic change by the end of the story; he lost all confidence in his abilities when he failed to save the girl despite doing everything he’d been taught to do. He changed from this confident young man to a man who ultimately cried on the porch of a woman who didn’t even know his name, despite he set her umbrella and chairs up everyday for her. His feelings toward Mrs. Lovenheim changed drastically as well, and with the last little bits of him explaining that he didn’t want her to let him go, shows how different he viewed her: from someone who he had a slight annoyance with, it seemed, to this woman he wanted to be held by. He still remembers her to the day he tells his story, and she couldn’t remember him as he stood on her porch that last night.

I had a lot of mixed emotions from this piece. When I began reading, I was intrigued by the subject matter and essay questions the narrator was reading. However, once I reached the second paragraph on page 155, the choice of words the author used began to annoy me. I think this is because I found her writing to be a little cheesy (hopefully that makes sense). For example, when the narrator thinks to herself, “yeah, yeah, cut the commercial and get back to the program,” it came off as cliché.

Another part that seemed to annoy me was the first few sentences of page 156. She judges another student in the class for turning in their exam before her and she thinks that this was done because the person does not know shit about the details. Perhaps I’m annoyed too easily. However, I found the narrator to be slightly rude and off-putting.

On pages 157 and 158, my emotions towards the choice of words and the narrator transformed a good bit. The description of her apartment and the one picture she chose to hang on her wall stood out to me. She thought to herself, “I kept the picture around because, oddly, putting away the idea of my folks would’ve been worse than losing the real them.” I’ve been struggling to understand this sentence since I first read this story. It might be because I have a hard time acknowledging the death of my loved ones. The narrator has obviously thought about the concept of loss and the images of loved ones, mental and physical, and what they mean to her. I tend to hide myself from these subjects and as a result, I do not understand my relationship with loss, grief, or healing. Pages 157 and 158 forced me to think about these topics and honestly, it made me uncomfortable. I can’t say that was a bad thing necessarily because it made me forget my initial reaction to the story and the narrator.

The narrator mentions that she was “ringing.” First she heard the ringing, then she felt the ringing. She said that it was coming from within her. At the end, the ringing stopped right before she began drinking tea. I’ve read this story a few times and I can’t quite figure out what the ringing is or what it means. When did the ringing start? Does it stop every time she begins to drink tea in her apartment? Why was she hearing the ringing in the beginning of the story but then begins to feel it? I am very confused by this, but also very intrigued.

To conclude, I am still very confused by this story. I thought it was good (mostly the second half), but what was the takeaway/main theme/point of the story? Was she in a stage of grief? If so, which stage (Kubler-Ross)? What was the ringing and what did it mean?

Although there were many differences between these two stories, there was a common theme that differentiated the lives of the two narrators: change. While the concept of change is both physical and mental, the change (or lack thereof) that occurred in both narrators’ mental and emotional states could not be more different. “The Lifeguard” by Mary Morris described a man as he remised about his days as a lifeguard before he ventured to college. In the beginning of the story, we were presented with this young man who somewhat vain; he even told us so himself, “I loved my body that summer. I loved its firmness and its bronzed skin. But mostly I loved the way it was admired… So I loved to stroll the beach among the girls who wanted to have me, old men who wanted to be me” (Morris 427).
His curiosity with Billy Mandel’s death was almost ironic as he was flung into a life-or-death situation himself, and was effortless in his attempts to resuscitate the poor girl; but what changed here? Did this life-or-death situation bring him to some grandiose confession? While he did confess to Ms. Lovenhiem that he did not know what to do, the real change was his disposition in response to the world around him. “…and I’ve never seen the water or the umbrellas of summer in the same way again” (Morris 431).
That narrator’s response to change was very different compared to “The Liar,” by Tobias Wolff. While the story was presented in first person and in past tense just like “The Lifeguard,” it was apparent to me how different the narrators felt/acted at the end of their stories. The narrator in “The Lair” lacked any sort of monumental change in his demeanor, lying until the very end of his story (Wolff 174). These two narrators have both set themselves on very different paths, all because of their willingness or resistance to change.

This story creates a heart-warming narrative of a couple and their passage through time together. It offers an honest, down to earth story structure. It uses flowing word passages and bleeding sentence structure to illustrate just how easy it is for two people to find each other in the world. Tiny and Lois’s meeting and eventual love showed how truly easy and accidental love can be. How easy it is for two seemingly strangers bloom into something more with very little resistance.

This story showed how love can physically and mentally change a person in entirety. Lois was painted by Tiny and became a “love letter,” an ode to their time together. Together they created a museum of art across Lois’s skin and personified their love. It shows how people tattoo themselves across one another and change together. Love changes you fundamentally. Lois became a map of her and Tiny love. It was only fair that Tiny would want a physical representation of her love across his own skin. Through this Lois also was able to find fulfillment in her own body. She grew in confidence to the point where she could openly sit with her mother while her tattoo were in full view.

This leads us to the last part of the story. The details of Lois delicately writing, “get well” across Tiny body left me speechless. In a way it made it seem as if him getting better was more important to Lois than showing and/or mapping their love physically. This was soul crushingly sweet as her own body was given up to create their “love letter” and all she asked in return was him to be ok.

Of the three readings assigned, the two that stood out to me the most were “Our Lady of the Quarry” by Mariana Enriquez and “It’s Bad Luck to Die” by Elizabeth McCrackan.  Both were very well written and I loved the focus each story had on emotions and surprises.  However, “It’s Bad Luck to Die” resinated with me more than anything.  

One of the major points within the story – to me, at least – was the dynamic between Lois and her mother.  Within the first sentence Lois explains that she’s Jewish and has at least three tattoos (where later you find that there were many, many more) that her late husband, Tiny, did for her.  Her mother made it clear from the beginning that she looked down on tattoos and what her daughter was doing and the few, brief interactions convey that.

In addition, there was quite a large age gap between Lois and Tiny – 31 years, to be exact.  This in particular caught me off guard.  Even the mention of her being six feet tall was less surprising, since I haven’t typically seen female characters above five foot eight.  It was also mentioned that Tiny had three previous wives before Lois and, since the story starts six months after Tiny’s passing, Lois’ had only the one husband.  However, I feel like Lois won’t ever marry again due to the way she holds herself at the end of the story.  She told herself – and the tattooist who was seeking Tiny work – that she wasn’t a museum.  Not yet, at least.  Instead, she referred to herself as a love letter.  Those words emphasizes the lasting impact Tiny left on Lois, with both his work and his love for her.

By the end of the story, Lois was fully embracing herself and I believe that’s due to the lasting impact Tiny had on her self esteem.  Right before his death where Lois was giving him a simple “get well” tattoo, Tiny says “I mean, tell me.  Do you feel finished?”  That line I could translate to “Do you feel complete, or whole?”  Even after his passing, she no longer tries to hide who she is, much to her mother’s dismay.  Lois would go to work at the library in short skirts and no sleeves, unafraid and uncaring of how people viewed her, which is reflected when her director comes to her and she replies “I’m sorry.  These are my widow’s seeds.”  I love the fact that she’s not sorry for who’s she’s chosen to be and is embracing herself and it truly shows how people impact others from the other side of life.

Although very different stories in theme and tone, “It’s Bad luck to Die” and “No one’s a Mystery” share some striking similarities. Both begin with a relationship between a young woman and an older man. However, in “It’s Bad Luck to Die” that relationship eventually cultivates itself into something long-lasting and meaningful, while readers of “No One’s a Mystery” understand that no such happy ending is possible for its characters. The way the two authors navigate word choice and the focus of the narrator creates the tone for each story. The young girl’s lust in “No one’s a Mystery” is apparent when the narrator describes in detail the jeans and zipper of her lover. She comments very little on his personality and virtues throughout the story but instead focuses on the physical. The opposite is true for “It’s Bad Luck to Die,” in which the author chooses to focus the narrator’s attention on Tiny’s personality. She notes, and reflects fondly on, his many quirks and admirable traits. The only physical trait she focuses on is his height and perhaps oldness, neither of which I would consider very alluring. But using this method of description, the author is able to convey that this is a relationship of many years and much love, not physical and temporary.  The author also begins the story with the narrator reflecting on their time together so the reader is aware they end up married as they begin to read how they met. Doing so, I believe, softens the blow of the age difference between the characters. It helps to know they work out. Knowing that the characters of “No one’s a Mystery” won’t work out makes that age difference painful.

Both stories also explore the power dynamic of age-gap relationships. The older man’s control is slightly more obvious in “No One’s a Mystery.” Jack clearly controls the narrator; it is obvious that he is sexually and emotionally dominant. He tells the narrator that she’ll remember that he taught her about sex and basically dictates what he expects that she’ll write in her diary. The power dynamic isn’t nearly as tangible in “It’s Bad Luck to Die.” They could be interpreted as an artistic couple that expresses love through drawing or being a canvas. But there is a part in the story where we see the narrator is a little hesitant to receive his tattoos, after he destroys her book and when he wants to tattoo a musician on her. She ends up being covered head to toe in tattoos of his design and creation, without one of her own ideas. He essentially claims her body. It’s only at the very end of the story does she get to return the favor.

I think there is also something to be said for the parallels between the diary given to the narrator in “No One’s a Mystery” and the diary the narrator of “It’s Bad Luck to Die”‘s skin becomes.

I just haven’t figured out what that something is.

The interest I have in this story stems from the use of the collective viewpoint; there is no “I” to the story, as one usually assumes is the case in first person-fiction, instead being replaced by a “we.” In the beginning paragraph, I almost thought the story had been selected as a mistake and that Silvia would serve as our main character. Instead, we are told what happened in almost a confessional by a group of attention-seeking (no judgments) teenage girls. Particularly striking, though, is how this collective front of “we” was so quick to set Natalia apart from the rest of them. Her acceptance as part of the group describing the events is conditional upon her behavior: When they all hate Silvia, she’s in. When they’re obsessed with Diego, she’s in. When she puts menstrual blood in Diego’s coffee, she’s out. She has her moments of belonging to the group after this, but that moment serves as the real split of her becoming a defined character. After everything, though, and perhaps this is the real horror of the story, she gets back in. After the girls run out of the quarry, Natalia leading them, they’re once again just “we.” “We” ignored the screaming. “We” got on the bus back into town. “We” told the driver everything was okay.

This story reads like a confessional made by a person begging for redemption from a booth in a church, though it doesn’t sound remorseful as one may expect in this situation. So to correct myself, this story reads like a confession, period. This is about a bunch of dumb teenagers making dumb decisions to impress boys but they don’t have restraint in their pursuits. The tone is calm and recollecting, like a confession made by a killer or someone haunted by a memory they can’t forget. Even when Silva is dying, our narrator seems like she’s in shock more than anything. From what information we are given, Natalia is known to obsess over what she wants and goes to extreme lengths to get what she wants, though even this seems like a bit much to our narrator.

This story builds tension beautifully by letting us know from the start that this narrator and her friends don’t like Silvia and they wish bad things upon her. “But we wanted her ruined, helpless, destroyed.” This sets the tone that something IS going to happen, but we as readers don’t know what. We’re also given the lovely warning about the dogs that foreshadowed the ultimate, untimely demise of our victim.

While the story itself is pretty cut and dry, it does perfectly encapsulate the teenage experience in one way or another. We all have had at least one friend like Silvia, who always tries to one up you for no reason or always seems to have a ridiculous amount of money and flaunts it with no regard for how it makes other people feel. We all have had friends that we’ve kept around just to leech off of them and get what they have like our narrator and her friends did with Silvia, and then they get jealous when the expected comes to be. This may be a little broad of an assumption to make, but I do think that wishing something bad upon someone else happens whether we want it to/truly believe in its intention or not. Teenage years are full of turmoil and sexual storms and other BS that makes life hard and that seems like prime time to harvest negative emotions from like the Virgin did from Natalia. While most of us in our teenage years never actually went through with our ill intents (as far as I know), Natalia did because she was presented with the opportunity at the right time. Yes it was a little extreme, but in the end, she is human and not all of us are nice and benevolent. What else can I say, teenage years suck.

What was revealed in this story was not a simple tale of two lovers and their life together, but instead a dynamic of what it is truly like to have found your soulmate, to have found the one that completes your puzzle. McCracken was able to create such a beautiful and enticing story that evokes emotion and thought into who Lois and Tiny are as human beings not just as characters in a story. The story was easy to read but still inflicted questions and wonder onto the reader. This was all done through McCracken’s strong ability of saying what needs to be said with no fluff added. Word choice has one of the biggest impacts on a story. It is a guiding factor that is right up there with diction and tone.

McCracken plucked out the words that fit snuggly into each sentence, each paragraph was thought out and given its own purpose. The subtle addition of figurative language adds enough spice to dull moments to peak up the readers interest and re-engage them. “At the end of the sessions, my hands would be dead asleep from trying to hold the book steady, and when I hit them on the edge of the table, trying to rouse them, they’d buzz like tuning forks.” This sentence is simple and almost a hair too long, but by wrapping it up using a simile that describes exactly how asleep Lois’ hands were without having to explain the tingling any more than saying “they’d buzz like tuning forks.”

It is truly a journey to read through this story and feel the lives of Lois and Tiny start to come to an end as you reach the last page. McCracken signed out their love story in such a way it caused almost immediate reflection on what I had just read. “I am not a museum, not yet, I’m a love letter, a love letter.” The entire story replayed in my mind and I recollected each tattoo session, each story they shared with one another, and this life they had together and what they built from it.

This is a story with several points of view. The narrators are a group of teenage girls, and Mariana Enriquez captures their different voices through seamless transitions of pronouns and nouns. In the beginning, we have “Silvia lived alone in a rented apartment of her own…” (1), and we assume that the story is in third person. The fourth line, however, describes Silvia as “…our ‘grownup’ friend, the one who took care of us when we went out and let us use her place to smoke weed and meet up with boys” (1). At the end of the first paragraph we read, “I’m talking low-class—that girl couldn’t dream of walking a runway” (2). The entire opening of the story is a cacophony of voices, so cleverly blended together and well-written that it’s easy to imagine the teenage girls talking over one another, or perhaps taking turns, to tell this story. This writing choice by Enriquez sets an interesting tone throughout the story and makes us wonder what is so important that all of them must speak?

We quickly come to realize that this group of girls hold considerable ill will towards Silvia by this jarring sentence: “But we wanted her ruined, helpless, destroyed” (1). There is such malice in those three words, such intense, deep feelings that causes us to sit up in our chairs. It is such strong language for even one narrator to use. Why the hatred towards Silvia? What did she do to warrant such strong emotion? We read on with caution because we now doubt the reliability of these narrators—a heart that feels such strong emotion cannot see with clear eyes. The girls continue to use strong language throughout the rest of the story, with the curse words, the shaming of Silvia’s body, their description of their desire for Diego, etc. Everything in this story is intense.

The essence of Marquez’s “Our Lady” is the messiness, the vulnerability, and the sensitivity of being teenage girls. Their teenage desire is evident in their want for what they can’t possess or don’t yet have, e.g. Diego, the freedoms of adulthood, and maturity. They’re also in the process of understanding both sexuality and their own bodies which fuels their intense jealousy for Silvia and her appeal to Diego; they believe themselves to be attractive and appealing to any man and yet can’t get Diego to notice them. Furthermore, this is a time where, due to their ages and inexperience, they are emotionally vulnerable and sensitive. This is apparent in their continuous confusion as to why Diego prefers Silvia over them, their embarrassment and humiliation from being played by Diego and Silvia, and Natalia’s rage and subsequent revenge on them both.

If there is one prevailing emotion among all the narrators, it is their deep want for revenge on Silvia. Beginning with that first jarring sentence, the want intensifies and eventually results in the murders of Silvia and Diego. The last phrase “Fine, great, it’s all good, it’s all good” (7), reads to us almost like a justification for their actions. They spend six pages telling us why Silvia is terrible, and then explains away her murder (and that of Diego) as she (they) deserved it. It can also be thought of with a dismissive tone, the girls having decided to put the event behind them. These girls show that someone(s) can seem innocent from a distance until one looks closer, much like the plaster statue assumed to be the Virgin when in actuality it is a red-painted female spirit of sexuality and witchcraft. These girls began as teenagers and ended as murderers.

“Our Lady of the Quarry” reveals so much in seven pages and is truly a testament to the writing abilities of Mariana Enriquez. She blends numerous aspects of writing together to create a dynamic and personal story that resonates with us.

The literary craftsmanship the author of this short story utilized was rich and made this piece relatable to readers whose lives drastically differ from that of the main character, Lois. I found there was a common theme throughout the entirety of this piece, and this theme would be most accurately described as the use of space. The concept of space was applied everywhere in the text; it was most strongly depicted in descriptions of Lois’ pale and empty skin towards the beginning of the story, the age gap between Lois and Tiny, and the rift between Lois and her mother. Lois describes her struggles when she was a young teenager as, “I felt like a ghost haunting too much space,” (McCracken 18) and I thought this perfectly summed up her situation before she met Tiny at the tattoo parlor. The author uses Lois’ insecurities to better show readers the change that occurs after she gets married to Tiny. The struggles she faces during this time in her life also makes her a more relatable character, as most everyone has gone through times of self doubt or insecurity.

A literary device the author uses time and time again in this story is contrast, and I found that this often went hand in hand with the theme of space. The difference in lifestyle and personality between Lois and her mother is a great example of this. Lois’ mother was described as having “a thousand lives”, and her ability to adapt to the constant change life brings made the idea of something permanent, like a tattoo, a foreign and evil concept to her. As such, this created distance between them because neither could understand the life of the other. The plain, simple tattoos Tiny does at the beginning of this story are very different from his fascination with art and the large, complex ones he does on Lois throughout their marriage. The filling up of empty space on Lois’ body is a great combination of both contrast and space, and as the amount of tattoos she had increased Lois became more confident in herself. I think this may have been because all of the tattoos she had were reminders of Tiny, and the amount of empty space Lois thought she was haunting was now filled with his artwork instead. Another major change that resulted because of this was that Lois was more comfortable seeing her reflection in mirrors. She describes herself as a love letter at the end of the story, the culmination of Tiny’s craft, and this resembles the memories and marks we leave on each other as we go through life with families, friends, and relationships. The people we are with have transformative qualities, and Lois’ tattoos are the physical and permanent representation of this transformation. It is something that her mother cannot touch or change, and gives Lois the sense of purpose and belonging that she only ever found when she met Tiny.

Edward P. Jones’s “The First Day” is about a girl whose mom is taking her to school for the first time. The story is told through the girl’s perspective as her mom tries to get her registered for school. Even though the story is being told in the present tense, it actually takes place in the past. Multiple hints are given that this a retelling of a distant memory such as “My shoes are my greatest joy, black patent leather miracles, and when one is knicked at the toe later that morning in class, my heart will break” (Jones 349). The mother is unsuccessful at registering her daughter at the school she wants her to go to since they live outside the area that the school district serves. However, the mother does not give up and takes her to another school where she can register her. The story ends with the mother walking away and the daughter getting ready to officially start her first day of school.

From reading the story, I can sense that this memory is an important one that the daughter has. She describes what happens as if she was there in the moment — from the smell of the Dixie Peach hair grease in her hair to how the floor at one of the elementary schools she went to had white papers littering the floor. To her, this is probably a rite of passage not only for herself but for her family as well since she will be learning to read and write.  An emphasis is also placed on how her mother is seemingly well prepared to make sure she gets her daughter enrolled in school given the amount of paperwork she has brought with her even though she cannot read herself. The daughter is also probably nervous on her first day but she does not show it as she feels like she has been prepared for this moment her entire life.

In the story “It’s Bad Luck to Die,” the surface level storyline appears to be about Lois describing the times she had with her late husband. While she believes this story is about her husband, Tiny, the story is instead an exploration of Lois’ personal growth both during her marriage with Tiny and after this death.

 Prior to meeting Tiny, we see that Lois had grappled with insecurities related to her height. “Up until then,” she says, “I’d always thought it was only sensible to fall in love with tall men so that I wouldn’t look so much like a giantess.” (McCracken  7) This insecurity contrasts with the first impression the reader is given of Tiny, which displays him as a confident man, with a charming manner about him. Lois finds herself taken in by his charms, claiming he could even charm her mother. The contrast between these characters is important because not only does it represent how different people deal with insecurity, but it also is a key element of their relationship. Both Lois and Tiny find themselves outside of societal norms due to their appearance and as we see throughout the story, this similarity helps Lois grow as a character.

During the course of the story, we see both direct and indirect ways that Tiny helps Lois, but the one I would like to address here is the mirror scene. Because this story is being told in the future, it means Lois chooses to include it. The fact she recalled this out of all her memories of Tiny is telling of how important it was to her. The scene is special because it provides an example of a time when Tiny went out of his way to help her insecurity by making her face it every day and in new ways, although I feel Lois tells this story in a more positive way than how she viewed it originally. 

 After all, he was filling their home with one of her insecurities, so I would imagine that she would get upset over this. Her content in describing it after the fact means that growth did occur from this scene.  There are of course other examples that show the character growth that occurs during her daily life with Tiny. A major one being the gradual decision to wear more revealing clothes. The choice to wear more revealing clothes in the shop is a way to show she is accepting of herself and her tattoos. This acceptance means she was content with her own choices and lifestyle even if they were outside of the norm.

Another way we see Lois’ growth is during her interactions with her mother. It is made clear early on in the story that her mother is disproving of her choices and this can serve as a representation of the old-fashion societal norms Lois does not live by. In the earliest interactions with her mother, Lois seems timid, hiding her tattoos. All this was in order to avoid feeling like she is a disappointment to her mother. However, the next time she is mentioned going to see her mother she stands up for herself.

“My mother poured me a cup of coffee and said “Sweet-hearts carve their names on trees, not on each other. Does it ever occur to you that you are not leading a normal life?” Yes, I said. “Thank you.” (McCracken 15-16)

At this moment we see Lois acknowledge she is never going to fit into the lifestyle her mother wants for her. This moment of confidence also parallels with her growing number of tattoos. Throughout the story we see her confidence grow alongside the increasing number of tattoos she has.  I do not believe this is because of the tattoos themselves rather because they are a representation of the time she has spent with Tiny, thus the time she has had to grow.

 Outside of the major themes of this story pertaining to growth, there is also an element related to death and grieving. When Tiny’s death seems imminent, Lois comes to the realization that she would “have to exist after he was gone.” (McCracken 21 ) This to Lois meant she would have to continue without the constant that had existed in her life for years. When Tiny dies we see Lois grieve, we see her struggle but then we see her thrive again.  She could have easily gone along with her mother’s wishes but instead wears her tattoos openly as “widow weeds.” ( McCracken 22) This and the ending where she calls herself a “love letter “is a representation she is self-assured of herself and this is directly due to the time she spent with Tiny. This is one of the elements I liked best about this story because it shows that even after death how much others can influence us.

This story shows a supposed maternal figure imposing a “proper” feminine life style that her daughter should live. The short set of advice includes both positive and negative suggestions based on current societal standards. But what I found most interesting about this narrative was the underlining themes presented through the expected mannerisms of a well-rounded young woman. Throughout this piece, an unchanging concept is the danger of female sexuality. The mother warns against actions that could lead to her daughter being labeled as a “slut.” These things are seen in seemingly normal aspects of a child’s life such as a dress neckline dropping too low or the way the girl walks and plays marbles. The mother uses abstract concepts, such as squeezing bread and returning fish, to dissuade her daughter from engaging in sinful activities. She even went on to explain a drug that can end a child before the child is real. This idea to which I can only assume is an at home abortion method.

The mother continues to preach the sinful nature of promiscuity and explains that the only way to keep this from “ruining” you, in a sort, is to view the transformative power of domesticity. The mother then goes on to tell her how to take care a house and in turn become a productive noble woman and not as a disregarded “slut.” The mother describes how this will ultimately lead to power in a communal setting and how fulfilling this life style will be if her daughter can save herself from falling fish and spit that she(the daughter) had thrown.

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.

“Our Lady of the Quarry,” by Mariana Enriquez, had been about the narrator being just another girl in her group of friends, trying to have fun in her youth. The narrator began the story about a woman, Silvia, she doesn’t like by giving details about her — how she saw Silvia. It comes to the reader’s attention that it’s not entirely a means of comparison why she didn’t like Silvia. Rather, she was more upset that the man her and her friends were interested in, Diego, was interested in Silvia. It’s likely that the narrator is thinking of the events that occur, as if she played the biggest part in it, due to the ending. I think she relays this story because she feels guilty about the events that took place, and in the beginning, tried justifying the feelings. I think she has a guilty conscious about it, and is likely thinking about it as she tries moving past it.

I think that the entire piece takes place recently, but no matter how recent or long ago the events took place, she will always have it in the back of her mind — it will never leave her. I think her perspective really kicks in once we get the idea that she is after Diego, who shows little to no interest in her or her friends in the same way they feel about him. It’s possible the narrator believes the story is about Silvia and Diego from when they met to their deaths. To me, it’s really about her moving through — maybe not past — her guilty conscious. She may not understand that, and she certainly did not understand the lives of others or their feelings or motivations.

When I first started reading the piece, it seemed to be a girl jealous or envious of another woman by looks, comfortability, or by the kicker, a man. Once I read the ending, however, it became apparent that she is battling these feelings of grief and guilt, and that maybe the piece is a reflection, or even a confession of what occurred.