Fifth Grade Autobiography

“Fifth Grade Autobiography,” as the title indicates, represents the speaker’s childhood recollection of an event that occurred when they were young. The speaker’s youthful naivete is evident in Stanza One, where they note how “My brother squats in poison ivy” (Line 3), drawing attention to a lack of awareness that often typifies the experience of many young children. It is possible that the children, both the speaker and their brother, do not know what is safe and what isn’t safe in the outdoors and that they are unfamiliar with the natural environment of the lake that is so comfortable for their grandparents. The speaker emphasizes their brother’s age with a mention of “his Davy Crockett cap” (line 4), especially because “the raccoon tail / flounces down the back of his sailor suit” (Lines 5-6). Sailor suits, though out of fashion now, were a common outfit for generations of young, preschool-aged children.

After establishing the relative ages of the children, in Stanza 2, the speaker turns their attention to the adults: “My grandfather sits to the far right / in a folding chair” (Lines 7-8). This mundane description leads to another memory, this time of their grandfather’s tobacco. The speaker “used to wrap it for him / every Christmas” (Lines 11-12). The act of wrapping the tobacco for their grandfather, not to mention its appearance as a Christmas gift, indicates that it was special for both the speaker of the poem and their grandfather.

In contrast to the speaker’s grandfather, who is in repose, the speaker’s grandmother is caught in action: “she’s leaning / into the ice chest” (Lines 13-14). Here, the reader observes a potentially stereotypical relaxing male figure contrast with a female who works to ensure the family’s comfort. In the poem’s most lyrical moment, the speaker brings together their grandmother’s femininity and the natural world directly after the description of their grandmother in motion: “sun through the trees / printing her dress with soft / luminous paws” (Lines 14-16).

Stanza 3 introduces tension into the poem, as “I am staring jealously at my brother” (Line 17). The next line explains the source of this tension: the brother, presumably older than the four-year-old speaker of the poem, “the day before rode his first horse, alone” (Line 17). The speaker is not merely jealous of their brother for this activity but for the contrast between their experiences. While the brother’s solo ride symbolizes freedom and maturation, the speaker “was strapped in a basket / behind my grandfather” (Lines 19-20). Such a set-up is reminiscent of a stroller or a bicycle seat for children too young to be left on their own. In contrast to their brother’s freedom, the speaker’s strongest memory of the ride is that their grandfather “smelled of lemons” (Line 21). At four, the speaker is old enough to envy their brother’s independence and age, as is clear from the use of the word “jealously” in Line 17. They are also old enough to want to test the limits of their own minimal freedom despite their confinement to the “basket” (Line 19).

“Fifth Grade Autobiography” concludes with a one-line stanza: “but I remember his hands” (Line 22). The final line shifts the perspective from the four-year-old’s point of view to the fifth grader’s older vantage point. The four-year-old longs for the independence afforded their older brother while the fifth grader is aware that, sometime after the photograph was taken, their grandfather dies. As a result, being “strapped in a basket / behind” (Lines 19-20) him was not so bad as such a position can only exist while their grandfather is alive.

The poem provides several reasons why the memory of the speaker’s grandfather’s hands persists. The fishing trip could have offered the grandfather plenty of opportunities to demonstrate his manual dexterity: baiting hooks, casting lines, or cleaning fish, for example. In addition, he is a tobacco user. Because the speaker mentions “tobacco” (Line 10), and not cigarettes or chewing tobacco, readers may assume that the grandfather rolled his own cigarettes, another instance of manual dexterity. Finally, the emphasis on hands echoes the “luminous paws” created by the sun on the grandmother’s dress in Lines 15 and 16, linking the speaker’s grandmother and grandfather together and heightening the poignancy of their separation when the grandfather dies.