The Unreliable Narrator in “The Last Practice”
Mr. Alvarez’s Grade 8 class is discussing an original short story, “The Last Practice,” in which a 14-year-old narrator, Jo, describes her final basketball scrimmage. The passage reads: “I never missed a free throw that season-well, maybe two in the first game, but those don’t count. Coach said I was the most reliable player, though he also said I needed to stop guessing on defense.” A student, Mia, writes: “Jo is an unreliable narrator because she lies about never missing; the text proves she missed two free throws, so nothing she says can be trusted.” Mr. Alvarez asks the class to distinguish between a narrator who is deliberately deceptive and one whose account is shaped by memory, pride, or limited perspective. The class must also identify which details support a more precise claim about Jo’s reliability.
1. Evaluate Mia’s claim that Jo is “unreliable” because she contradicts herself. Identify one detail that supports Mia’s concern and one detail that complicates her conclusion, then explain what a more precise claim about Jo’s reliability would be.
Read the worked answer
What supports Mia: Jo says she “never missed a free throw that season” and then admits “maybe two in the first game.” That is a genuine inconsistency, and it matters because Jo immediately adds “those don’t count,” which shows she is shaping the story to protect her self-image. A reader should therefore treat her self-report with caution.
What complicates Mia: Mia leaps from “Jo contradicts herself” to “nothing she says can be trusted.” That is too broad. Jo also reports criticism from Coach-“stop guessing on defense”-which is evidence against pure deception; a narrator who wanted only to flatter herself could have omitted that. The contradiction is better explained by pride, selective memory, or the qualifier “those don’t count” than by a deliberate lie about all events.
More precise claim: Jo is a self-favoring narrator whose account is biased in her own favor, especially about her performance, but not necessarily false about external events. Readers should separate her factual reporting from her self-evaluation and look for moments when other characters’ words correct her. This claim fits both the boast and the coach’s criticism.
2. Revise Mia’s thesis into a defensible claim about Jo as a narrator. Use at least one piece of textual evidence and explain how your revision changes the reader’s understanding of the passage.
Read the worked answer
Revised thesis: In “The Last Practice,” Jo is a proud, self-favoring narrator whose account is shaped by the need to appear reliable; her admission that she “maybe” missed two free throws but that “those don’t count” reveals selective memory rather than total dishonesty.
Evidence and effect: The qualifier “maybe” softens the admission, and “those don’t count” rationalizes it. This makes the reader see Jo as a realistic adolescent protecting her identity, not as a liar. It also changes how we read Coach’s comment: his praise (“most reliable player”) and criticism (“stop guessing”) both enter the story, so Jo is not hiding all negative information. The revised thesis is defensible because it is limited to Jo’s self-evaluation, uses specific words from the passage, and explains the effect on the reader. Mia’s original thesis overreached by saying “nothing she says can be trusted”; the revision accounts for both the bias and the reliable details.