In these two stories, we can have different levels of reading. Indeed, if we only focus on what happens, the stories are really simple and we don’t have a lot of action. In “Rara Avis,” this is the story of a twelve-year-old guy who lives in a little town where a bird is the center of the attention — or at least of his attention. In “The First Day” we read the story of a woman who remembers her first day in kindergarten when her mother accompanied her.
But if we look at the multiple occurrences of two images, the one of the bird and the one of the mother, we can have a different levels of reading that would be more symbolic. First, the stories are both marked by multiple, detailed descriptions that are especially visual or sensual. We can see the environment the characters are in but also feel and hear. Finally, the ends of both stories are marked by the disappearance of the images that have been there all throughout the story. This is very present in the reading as we can hear the steps of the mother but also see the young boy throwing a stone at the bird. In the end, the resolution resulted in an opening: the young boy will have to face the emergence of his sexuality in the future, and the young girl who was living her first day at school is now an educated woman who is able to write about it.