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Children and adults see the world differently.

Throughout the story, Ortíz Cofer contrasts the way Elena and her peers at school see the world with the way the adults experience the same settings and events. From the first scene, the author establishes a division of experience by age, deftly symbolized by the children being sent outside for P.E. class while their teacher remains indoors. Although Mr. DePalma is supposed to watch over them, Ortíz Cofer uses quotation marks within the phrase “he in the meantime would ‘keep an eye’ on us” to suggest that his oversight is meaningless and the students will operate according to their own rules. The students define their own reality so strongly that even an adult like Mr. DePalma, who has a reputation for handling the most difficult students, cannot get them to comprehend the tragedy of President Kennedy’s death.

This pattern repeats throughout the story with regard to Kennedy’s death and to other aspects of life in Paterson. The adults see their viewpoint as self-evident, but the children find their own interests and everyday concerns more important. Ortíz Cofer structures the story as an alternation between the adult world’s response to Kennedy’s death and Elena’s fixation on her plans with Eugene. The adult residents of El Building mourn and even the traffic gets quiet, but Elena is filled with joy that she has plans to go to Eugene’s house. While her mother makes plans to go to church to pray, Elena applies pink lipstick. Even at the end of the story, when she is as sad as her parents, Elena recognizes that while their sorrow is focused on Kennedy and his family, her tears are for her own personal loss of the potential relationship with Eugene. 

Some places are transitional.

Over the course of the story, it becomes apparent that whatever their differences, most of the characters dislike life in Paterson and think of it not as a home but as a temporary stop on the way to someplace better. Some, like Elena’s father, hope for the twentieth-century American dream of a suburban house with a yard. Others, like her mother, dream of returning to the places they left when they came to Paterson in search of greater economic opportunity. Eugene’s mother refuses to put down roots, expecting to leave soon. Her fears of Eugene’s connection to Elena in part reflect her concern that Eugene will build connections within Paterson, which she does not see as a place to stay. Elena herself dreams of college and a life as a teacher, but not in cold and unwelcoming Paterson. Even the elderly Jewish widow Elena once watched in the house next door is depicted on her way out of Paterson. 

Ortíz Cofer also paints Paterson itself as a place caught in transition. Successive waves of various ethnic groups have come through the city over the decades, as indicated by the contrast in age between the Jewish couple next door and the Jewish men at Mario’s and the Puerto Ricans of El Building. The Jewish residents are elderly. They are part of a population that was established in the city long before the events of the book, now aging and leaving Paterson. The Puerto Rican population is made of younger, more recent arrivals. Ortíz Cofer shows this change through her descriptions of the city’s architecture as well. Large apartment buildings like El Building have sprung up to accommodate the new arrivals, shading and crowding out the single-family homes built in an earlier era, for a smaller population. The result is a city filled with racial tensions, which everyone seems to want to leave. 

American history consists of both large events and ordinary moments.

The story takes place on the day of President Kennedy’s assassination, a pivotal time in the United States. That day is frequently cited as one of the most important days in twentieth-century American history, a day that united the nation in mourning a popular and charismatic young leader whose election seemed to signal a major change in American values and laws. Kennedy was beloved in part because he was a figure of hope for prosperity and increasing the inclusion of minorities in civic life. Throughout the story, Ortíz Cofer shows the ways this event affected ordinary people on an emotional level, from Mr. DePalma’s tears at school to Elena’s parents’ late-night sorrow for Kennedy’s widow and children. Although the characters in the story have no personal connection to Kennedy, they nevertheless experience his assassination as a major event in their own lives. In this way, Ortíz Cofer shows how historical events affect the daily lives of ordinary people, on an emotional level even before practical effects occur.

The story’s title evokes the dual reality of events like the Kennedy assassination. The assassination is the kind of event recorded in history textbooks and taught to generations of students. The lives of presidents and other powerful leaders are considered “real” history. However, this story contains almost no details of the assassination itself, focusing instead on the daily lives of ordinary people. Some, like Mr. DePalma and Elena’s mother, are captivated by the shock of Kennedy’s death, feeling a deep emotional response. Others, like Elena, Eugene, and Eugene’s mother, are primarily attending to events in their personal lives. The tensions and structural inequalities represented by their personal conflicts reflect important trends in American life in this period. The interpersonal relationships of the teenagers in the story, for instance, illustrate the prejudice and inequality that drive the struggle for civil rights in this period, and their ideological differences with their parents foreshadow the youth rebellions of the late 1960s and 70s. The title suggests that the lives of ordinary people are also American history, as worthy of attention and study as events like the Kennedy assassination.

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