Interpreting a Narrator's Mixed Feelings
Read this passage:
The house on Mercer Street had not changed: the same cracked walkway, the same dented mailbox. My mother used to say the dent came from a delivery truck, though my brother and I always insisted it was a meteor. I stood on the porch for a long time before I rang. When my aunt opened the door, she said, “You look just like her,” and I laughed, because I had spent twenty years trying not to.
A student claims the narrator feels only sadness about the past. Another student says the narrator feels affection mixed with discomfort.
1. Which claim is better supported by the passage? Use details from the text.
Read the worked answer
The second claim is better supported. The narrator remembers the cracked walkway and dented mailbox in detail and recalls a family joke about a meteor, which suggests affection and familiarity rather than pure sadness. Standing on the porch “for a long time” before ringing also shows reluctance to leave or to enter, a sign of attachment. But the ending adds discomfort: the narrator laughs at “You look just like her” because of “twenty years trying not to,” which shows an effort to avoid the resemblance. “Only sadness” cannot account for the humor or the resistance.
2. How does the final clause, “because I had spent twenty years trying not to,” affect the tone of the ending?
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It turns what could be a warm reunion into something guarded and self-aware. On its own, “I laughed” might read as pleasure at the compliment. The final clause reveals that the laugh is a reaction to an uncomfortable comparison, and that the narrator has deliberately resisted becoming like “her.” The tone becomes wry and ambivalent: the narrator is not simply sad, but aware of old tension in the family. That shift is what makes the “affection mixed with discomfort” reading stronger than a single-emotion reading.