Eugenia Collier's short story is an excerpt from African-American family life dealing with the themes of innocence and maturity, poverty and hopelessness in Depression Era told in first-person. The author uses personification with the description of lead character, Lizabeth's lines "My father whittled toys for us, and laughed so loud that the great oak seemed to laugh with him...". As we can observe, the intended character that Lizabeth describes is her father.