First Confession

“Relations in the one house are a strain at the best of times, but, to make matters worse, my grandmother was a real old countrywoman and quite unsuited to the life in town.”

The opening line sets up the tension in the story between Jackie and his grandmother. Jackie takes an instant dislike to the old woman and struggles to find a way to justify a feeling that he believes is most likely a sin. His determination that her country ways account for his dislike reveals his immaturity and how much he needs to evolve emotionally and spiritually.

“I was too honest, and that was my trouble.”

In a story centered on the sacrament of confession, which assumes the penitent expresses completely and unreservedly the depths of their sin, it is a measure of how much Jackie still needs to learn that he sees honesty as a problem. He will learn only in the confessional the reanimating joy of honesty. In the closing scene, his honesty will be his redemption.

“She might have mentioned the other place as well, but that could only have been by accident, for hell had the first place in her heart.”

Jackie, as a seven-year-old first-person narrator, lacks the maturity and the insight to realize how problematic is the catechism teacher’s presentation of the sacrament of confession. She focuses only on the punishment for sin and never mentions the rewards of a virtuous life, the eternal glory of heaven.