The Lesson by Jennifer Jordan Schaller

https://creativenonfiction.org/writing/the-lesson/

A critique by Allanah Calatraba

“So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of
them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose
where we go from there.” This quotation of Stephen Chbosky from his award-winning novel,
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower epitomizes the comprehensive notions of Jennifer Jordan
Schaller’s nonfiction short story, The Lesson. A story too bizarre to be a recounting of events, yet
also too realistic to be a fabrication. It explicates profound ideas about one’s mental health and
matters surrounding it.
The Lesson unlocks with young Jennifer’s mother instructing her on the proper way to
take a shot of vodka. She was thirteen, an eight-grader, drinking booze with her mother on a
Saturday morning - a vague alcoholic-in-training. Her mother, on the brink of another divorce,
with her step dad this time, was having escapism through alcohol, which she is brushing onto her
daughter. She teaches her to dance and to learn the beat to Paul Simon’s songs. Young Jennifer,
on the other hand, couldn’t hear the beat and instead heard the garage door, which she believed
was her step dad. Her step dad wouldn’t like the idea of her drinking, but she was loyal to her
mother. She was her mother’s little drinking buddy.
The story's pace, combined with the language employed, created a reading experience
that thoroughly involved the reader in the plot. I personally didn’t experience any of the issues
included in the story, but upon reading, it seemed like I was the protagonist as the story carried
on. How it was written was not superficial, it was intense and miserable at the same time. It
made me entirely absorbed in it, despite the story’s melancholy.
These profound issues mentioned surrounding one’s mental health mainly include
alcoholism and underage drinking, trauma, divorce, and family’s influence. Every aspect that
Jennifer experienced was rooted from her mother’s mental troubles. It was specified in the story
that the mother was an alcoholic to forget her current reality which is her struggles in
maintaining a relationship, and Jennifer was dragged into this alcoholism that led her into
underage drinking. It was stated that at the age of thirteen, her emotion and rational parts of the
brain were not clicking yet which led her into thinking that what she was doing was clearly not
normal but still a privilege which makes her happy and excited, because, who else is drinking
with their mother on a Saturday morning, at thirteen? No one, but her. Alcoholism as one of the
main issues in the story opens up not only the effects of it to the alcoholic but also to the people
who see and possibly follow them.
In the story, they were dancing to two Paul Simon songs, one of which was entitled
“Graceland”. Whenever this song would come up, Jennifer would always think of it as the
beginning of a good time. I discovered a minimal symbolism with Jennifer’s experience to the
songs that they were listening to. The lyrics of “Graceland” are widely assumed to be about
Paul Simon attempting to use the legendary road trip to find refuge, serenity, and comfort from
the agony he felt following his divorce from American actress Carrie Fisher. With the lyrics “My
traveling companion is nine years old, he is the child of my first marriage, but I've reason to
believe, we both will be received, in Graceland” I see this as a metaphor of the possible divorce
of Jennifer’s mother and her step dad and also her relationship with her. She was also her
mother’s companion, a daughter from her first marriage, and they were both received in
Graceland, which I assume symbolizes their only way of bonding, which is their ritual in
drinking. Alcohol and music both became their escape.
The story’s format makes a significant contribution to its form of creative nonfiction. The
drifting in and out of flashbacks to Schaller's current thoughts on the scenario increases the sense
of bewilderment and madness, which fits nicely with the material, a thirteen-year-old drinking
for the first time. In this part, Jennifer’s trauma was evident, as it was stated that now she likes
vodka and dancing instead of doing chores just like her mother. Her mother created and
nourished her, however she wanted to forget how she raised her, but she couldn’t. The past
events traumatized her to the point that she was afraid she would repeat it to her children, for she
is a mother now, too. With the juxtaposition of fantasy verbs and descriptions, and the brutal
factual features of her mother's alcoholism, I believe the fact that this is a true story makes it
even more bizarre.
All things considered, the story is more on the adverse side of suffering and mistreatment,
and less on the optimistic side, but all is well. The way the story is written is sharp and somewhat
depressing in a way. All of trauma and pain can be a potent force of progress. It’s right that we
don’t get to know all the reasons why we are who we are, or get to choose who our parents are,
or our house, or our lifestyle, but, one thing is for sure, we can choose our path from there.