Summary Of The First Day By Edward Jones

In his essay, “The First Day,” Published in his collection of short stories titled Lost in the City, author Edward Jones describes a little girl's first day of kindergarten, during the day she learns that her mother is illiterate. While the mother’s actions embodied the values of education, the child's most important lesson is seeing her mother flawed.

Edward Jones was born on October 5, 1950, in Arlington, Virginia. Jones has written many books and short stories and has won countless awards for his works of literature. In 1992, Jones published a collection of short stories called Lost in the City, including stories titled "The First Day," "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons," "The Store," "His Mother's House," and "Young Lions," (“Edward P Jones

Biography”,2015).
One of the stories in Lost in the City is “The First Day”. “The First Day” is about a little girl's first day of kindergarten. There is an anomaly between the authors his self the narrator of the story. This anomaly is not seen without knowing about the author’s background. According to Edward P. Jones Biography, Jones had many similarities as the little girl in his story. “The only son of an illiterate hotel maid and a kitchen worker, Jones grew up in his mother's sphere because his father had drifted out of his life when he was a preschooler” (“Edward P Jones Biography, 2015”). One similarity between Jones and the little girl from “The First Day” is the little girl never mentions a father figure, she has a mother and two neighbors, Miss Mary, and Miss Blondelle, but no father and Jones’ father was non-present in his life. Another similarity between the author and the little girl was that both their mothers were illiterate and hard working. Lastly, both the author and the little girl in the short story grew up poor. One difference between the author and the little girl is the author is a grown male and the narrator in the story is a five-year-old girl.
The author uses the mood and foreshadowing to show how the little girls’ greatest lesson was seeing her mother flawed. The author uses foreshadowing to show the reader that the daughter now is ashamed of her mother. In an otherwise unremarkable September morning, long before I learned to be ashamed of my mother” (Jones, 1992, p.1). This quote explains that the narrator is now grown and is looking back at this day. The mood during the beginning of the short story was happy, the reader could picture a very happy little girl on her first day to school with her mother but, by the end of the story the mood takes a dramatic change. This happy little girl has now learned that her mother is illiterate or flawed, and the story ends with a sad or somber mood as the mother leaves her daughter at school.
One important part of this essay is figurative language. The author uses figurative language to describe the exact outfit that the girl was wearing. “I am wearing a checkered like blue-and-green cotton dress, and scattered about these colors are bits of yellow and white and brown” (Jones, 1992, p. 1). And “My shoes are my greatest joy, black patent-leather miracles, and when one is nicked at the toe later that morning in class, my heart will break” (Jones, 1992, p.1). All this figurative language is significant because the narrator called this day, “an otherwise unremarkable September morning” but yet she still remembers exactly what she was wearing down to the smell even though the author is all grown up and can still remember almost everything. This is significant because it was a shocking day in her life to find out that her mother was flawed, and it was so shocking that she remembered it all. Just like today, an American might remembered exactly what they were doing on September 11th, 2001.
The narrator describes her appeal almost to show pride in how she is dressed but also to show pride of how her mother dressed her. She was proud of her mother because how perfectly she dressed her. The daughter was extremely proud of how she looked before she figured out that her mother can not read or write. The author uses a binary opposition to compare the little girl's shoes to the girl’s mother. Before the little girl found out that her mother is illiterate, she called her shoes her greatest joy, then later in the morning when the little girl nicked the toe and flawed the shoes, it broke her heart. This is the same for the little girl and her mother. On the way to school the little girl loved her mother, the mother was the daughter’s greatest joy until she figured out that he mother is illiterate or flawed, it broke her heart.
One of the main points of this essay is that the mother wants her daughter to get an education.

The mother wants her daughter to get an education so badly that she will even argue with a woman about letting her daughter go to school, “My mother is not convinced and for several more minutes she questions the woman about why I cannot attend Seaton.” The reader can see that the mother wants her daughter to get an education so badly because the mother is illiterate and can't read or write herself. The mother hopes that with an education her daughter can have a better life than the mother has. According to Single-parent Families in Poverty, an article written by Jacqueline Kirby, M.S. from The Ohio State University, describes the hardships of being a single parent, especially the financial hardships trying to care for not only himself but their children too. “The chronic strains of poverty combined with task overload significantly increases vulnerability to new life stressors. Poor single mothers often experience a cycle of hopelessness and despair which is detrimental to both themselves and their children” (Kirby). This is one of the reasons why the mother wants her daughter to get an education, and the mother does not want a life of hardships for her daughter. In their academic article ‘I know I'm a good mom’: Young, low-income mothers’ written by Amy Romagnoli and Glenda Wall, that describes the hardships for low- income parents, “While mothers, in general, are subject to public scrutiny, for young and low-income mothers, the scrutiny was felt as much more intense” (Romagnoli & Wall, 2012, p.281). This quote shows that young low-income mothers feel much more scrutinized than other mothers might because they are looked at completely differently, in the article one mother gave an example of this scrutiny, ‘On the bus people are just like give you a dirty look just because you’re young, and you got a kid” (Romagnoli & Wall, 2012, p.281). The mother in “The First day”

fit into both of these articles because she was a single parent and was low income, she was scrutinized not only because she was a low-income single parent but also because she could not read. No mother would want her daughter to be scrutinized, which is why the mother wanted her daughter to get an education. The mother and narrator both want an education, but they do not agree on where the daughter should go to school.
The mother and the daughter want different types of education. This can be seen with the contract between the two schools. The mother wants her daughter to go to Seaton Elementary. The mother wants her daughter to go to Seaton Elementary because it is located across the street from their church. When they are denied entry, the mother starts to argue with the lady at the door, “My mother shakes her head vigorously. ‘I want her to go here,’ my mother says. ‘If I’da wanted her someplace else, I’da took her there.’”(Jones, 1992, p.1). The narrator has a different opinion about Seaton Elementary; she describes Seaton Elementary as an, “a timeworn, sad-faced building across the street” (Jones, 1992, p.1). The mother ends up taking her daughter to Walker-Jones Elementary. The narrator describes Walker-Jones as being a larger and a newer school and the narrator said she immediately like it because of that, but the mother was still unsure about the school because it is away from her church, her rock.
One moral the mother tries to instill in her daughter is, “Do as I say, not as I do.” This is seen in more than one way. One way the author shows that the other is trying to teach her daughter this moral is after her mother had asked for help on the papers because she can't read, a little girl was staring at the mother, so the narrator stared back at the little girl, and her mother said, ”’Don’t stare,’ my mother says to me. ‘You know better than that.’” The mother is trying to instill into her daughter a good manner of not staring, “Do as I say”. However when the teacher came up to introduce herself to the mother and daughter, the mother stared at her, the “not as I do.” This “Do as I say, not as I do” moral can be seen again when the narrator hears a new word for the first time. When the narrator calls her sister this word her mother slaps her across the mouth, and the narrator said, “and the word is lost for years and years.” Again the mother tries to instill in her daughter don’t use that word, “Do as I say”. The narrator said she first heard the word because an older boy called Miss Mary and Miss Blondelle that word and the narrated described the word as, “This is my mother.”
Education is the most important gift a parent can give a child but sadly many kids in the United States go without the proper education that they need because they can afford it. According to dosomething.org, a website for young people and social change, More than 30 million children are growing up in poverty ("11 Facts about Education," 2014). These children are living with poverty every day that sadly education is the last opinion. “Dropout rates of 16 to 24-years-old students who come from low-income families are seven times more likely to drop out than those from families with higher incomes” ("11 Facts about Education," 2014).
While the mother’s actions embodied the values of education and the mother tries her hardest to teach her, the daughter’s most important lesson was seeing her mother flawed. The essay never said anything about what happened the rest of the day after the mother left because to the narrator it was not as important as what happened earlier in the day, with finding out her mother is flawed. Five years’ old normally look at their mothers as being perfect; they are supposed to be someone a little girl can look up to. To a little girl, no bond should be stronger than their bond with their parents and in this case with the daughter’s single mother.