Summary and Interpretation of The First Thing The Baby Did Wrong

Published in 1987 with works in Forty Stories, which would be the last publication that Barthelme would get to see happen before his death, "The Baby" is a great example of Postmodernism work.  The story "deals with the all-too-real concept that when a baby is born into a family, the dynamics of the family shift and the parents are no longer in control" (Brock).  The narrator, who is later identified as the father, has set a rule that if the child tears out pages from books, it will be punished by being sent to it's room for four hours for each page torn.  This does not stop when the baby grows and is able to tear more and more pages from the books.  "I felt that if you made a rule you had to stick to it, had to be consistent, otherwise they get the wrong idea" (Barthelme).  While every parent in the world would find that one statement to be true, one cannot help but to see the absurdity in making a baby stay in it's room so long for just a torn page.  Humor emerges when the narrator makes a statement that there are plenty of things in the room to keep the child busy, if the child were to use her time wisely.  The child starts to look ill and the mother is concerned about the fact that the child had not been able to eat while she was confined to her room.  The reader can tell that even the mother of this child finds this behavior of the father absurd.  "The longest we ever kept her in her room consecutive was eighty-eight hours, and that ended when my wife took the door off its hinges with a crowbar even though the baby still owed us twelve hours because she was working off twenty five pages" (Barthelme).  There are times when the child would run out of her room running to the first book she would see and rip it apart.  By the last paragraph, the father decides that tearing pages out of books and having torn pages out of books is alright noting that "one of the satisfying things about being a parent-you've got a lot of moves, each one good as gold" (Barthelme).  This statement is where you can see the dynamics of the family change.  The child's behavior has set the new rule because the narrator has grown tired of the punishment having the opposite effect.
This story is a great example of Postmodernism writings by Donald Barthelme.  It has taken an issue that most parents deal with and made it absurd and humorous at the same time.