The Leap

The writer makes us see the mother by describing the way she moves in the first paragraph of the story. The writer informs the reader that she is now blind, and says,
"She walks slowly through the house... She has never upset an object or as much as brushed a magazine onto the floor. She has never lost her balance or bumped into a closet door left carelessly open."

From these few sentences, you can tell that she has either been blind for years and is used to finding her way without trouble, or that she's been living in this house for years and is accustomed to where everything is placed. You could think that if she's been living in the same house for years, if could mean that she's insecure about change. She has to have everything stay exactly where she wants it to be - "a closet door left carelessly open", the writer is saying this as if, any one little thing is not where it should be, it's bad and that the person who committed this is "careless".

The writer uses phrases such as, "Catlike precision" which makes me think she has a very good sense of place. With these in mind, I can picture the mother walking slowly through the house in a nightgown, almost angelically, wearing a soft focused face as if she's concentrating on where she's going, but not concentrated enough to make her seem tense or uncomfortable.

She is described as catlike, graceful, comfortable, matter-of-fact and one with the constant dark by the writer. I would describe her as daring, brave, loyal, and strong. She's daring and brave because she was seven months pregnant and still doing jumps from large heights. She's loyal because she did anything to get her child out from their burning house. Finally, she's strong because she deals with the the death of her husband, and daughter, and re-marries and has another child.


The narrator is the child of the person she's telling the story about. This perspective tells us about the mother in an obvious way, that she has a child. This perspective also shows that the mother is close to her child, therefore; you know that the mother is caring, loving, and is a good parental figure.


"The child, however, is buried around the corner, beyond this house and just down the highway. sometimes I used to walk there just to sit. She was a girl, but I rarely thought of her as a sister or even as a separate person really." Page 193, paragraph 1.
I have a brother that was born before me that was stillborn, and I would do almost the same thing. I remember walking with my friends and near my house is the cemetery, I walked over to see the grave. The cemetery is just across the highway, so I'm close, like the narrator is. That part of the short story reminds me of this moment in my life.