I was twelve and in junior high school and something happened that we didn’t have a name for, but it was there nonetheless like a lion, and roaring, roaring that way the biggest things do.
Read it again because if you don’t realize the absolute brilliance of this opening line, you are in trouble. Strangely enough, more novels have given us memorable opening lines than short stories despite there being so many more short stories having been written. Arguments will be made, of course, but anyone who doesn’t realize that this is one of the greatest opening lines in the history of short stories probably should not be listened to and definitely should not be learned from. What does this line tell the reader? The age and perspective of the narrator. That the title is pure metaphor. That the metaphor is pure ambiguity. And, most importantly, that the story’s overriding theme is about sometimes it is almost impossible to put an experience into words. Read it again. Because as far as opening lines to short stories ago, it is majestic.
Only, in junior high school, school wasn’t school, everything was backwardlike.
Again, here we have a demonstration of the problem with putting experience into simple language. “Backwardlike” is not really a word, but it certainly sounds like it should be. Anyone can figure out what the narrator means here; at the same time, of course, what the dickens is the talking about? School isn’t school in in junior high school? What does that mean? Out of context, it means nothing. Situate it into the story exactly where it is the meaning becomes as precise as “backwardlike.”
we had this perception about nature then, that nature is imperfect and that round things are perfect
Another theme at work is the idea that perfection exists in the world, but that such perfection is unnatural. As it is unnatural, within the confines of the story, it must remain in the “Forbidden Zone” which means on the other side of the arroyo.
And on the other side of this hill we found heaven.
The entire narrative leads to this line. Yes, events take place afterward that are great importance, but the very idea of heaven existing on the other side of an arroyo outside a small Arizona city is what this story is about. It is an allegory. An allegory of the Garden of Eden Golfers appearing from the grass like snakes. Picnic on the golf course green is like eating the forbidden fruit.
We buried it because it was perfect. We didn’t tell my mother, but together it was all we talked about, til we forgot. It was the lion.
The “it” which was perfect and which was buried is the perfectly round and perfectly smooth grinding ball. The grinding ball is the actual forbidden fruit; the apple with which Adam is tempted. The grinding ball discovery and burial takes place outside the timeline of the picnic on the golf course, yet it is inextricably linked to that previous event because—like the heavenly patch of green—the grinding ball represents a state of idealized perfection out of context in the world they know and so must be buried and never recovered, destined to become a thing of myth and legend.
