A main idea question about a personal memory tests whether you can tell what the whole scene shows about the narrator. Start by naming the topic and the narrator's first view of it. Then look for a change in understanding and ask what the details after that change help you see. Predict the main idea in one sentence that covers both what changes and why. Wrong choices may add more than the text says or stop at one detail.
Hints
- Hint 1
Compare the opening description with the sentence that begins “Only recently.” Look for what changes in the narrator's understanding.
- Hint 2
Connect the final sentence to the grandmother's morning tasks. What does that sentence tell you about why she repeats them?
Step-by-step
Follow the narrator's change in understanding
Step 1Name the topic and first view
The narrator starts with my grandmother's kitchen as an unchanging museum, which gives us the topic and an earlier view of it. What does that comparison suggest? The kettle, windowpane, and smell all seem fixed in place. The narrator first sees only sameness, so we need to see how the rest of the text changes that view.
- Step 2
Find the point after the turn
Where does that view change? Only recently did I understand marks the turn, where the text moves away from an earlier view. Now we learn that the sameness was not neglect but careful maintenance, because the grandmother polishes, cleans, and sets out nutmeg each morning. Why does that effort matter? Calling it a wordless welcome rehearsed daily shows that she's preparing the kitchen to greet the family. So we can predict that the narrator learns to see loving effort behind a room that seems unchanged.
- Step 3
Check the choices against the whole scene
The choices about longs for modernity, vacation trips, and the first time they helped add feelings or events that this memory never describes. Which choice names the narrator's changed view without adding another story? The choice about a deliberate act of care matches the grandmother's wordless welcome, while comes to see puts the narrator's new understanding at the center. Its rather than mere habit shows that she repeats the chores to care for her family. Choice D.