Childhood is complicated; our nostalgic memories are sometimes mingled with the harsh realities of our society. Trethewey’s “History Lesson” features rich imagery and sensory details, as well as simile, personification, and a dynamic shift in tone to convey the cruelty of racial segregation and Jim Crow laws in the late 1900s, as well as an optimistic outlook on the future.
The poem starts with a description of a picturesque beach scene. The speaker reminisces about being a four-year-old girl, “[curling her toes] around wet sand” (lines 4-5) and taking in the “minnows [darting] at my feet [glinting] like switchblades” (lines 7-8). This use of vivid imagery and strong figurative language conveys the nostalgia associated with looking at this photograph – it portrays a very simple scene at first, an idyllic snapshot of the past.
Suddenly, the tone of the poem changes very quickly, shifting at line 11. The comparison of minnows to switchblades in line 8 foreshadows this: for the speaker, life was a double-edged sword, both gentle and threatening. Trethewey reveals that the original photograph of the speaker was taken in 1970, and compares it to a much older one in which reality was quite different. The focus shifts to the speaker’s grandmother, who is the focus of the second half of the poem. Instead of a flowered, bright bikini (lines 3-4), the speaker’s grandmother wears a cotton meal-sack dress (line 17). She stands on “a narrow plot of sand marked colored” (lines 14-15). These descriptive comparisons serve as commentary on the inhumane treatment of middle- or lower- class African American people during the 1900s.
However, despite the title, Trethewey’s message is not entirely about the history of racial segregation; the “lesson” promised by the title is primarily about hope and vivacity. In spite of their differing lifestyles, both the speaker and her grandmother stand happily on the same beach. They both pose in the same way, with their “hands on the flowered hips” of their clothes (lines 3-4 and 16-17), and the speaker’s grandmother is smiling (line 15). They share some of the same experiences and memories – their childlike innocence and vigor is preserved over the course of forty years. Throughout the poem, Trethewey uses time to symbolically represent change, but the contrasting lifestyles still have much in common.
Most importantly, both speaker and grandmother have access to the full beach now. The “wide strip of Mississippi beach” (line 2) that the speaker can stand on represents opportunities for change. Although it has only been two years since the end of segregation, and American society still has a long way to go, progress is slow and steady. Similar to how our own personal experiences inform our decisions later on, we hope that the history of our society can help us improve lives for future generations. In “History Lesson”, Trethewey encourages her readers to learn the “lessons” that history teaches us and look to the future, which carries many possibilities for improvement.
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