# Earliest Impressions explained — Twenty Years at Hull House > Chapter companion for Twenty Years at Hull House by Jane Addams. ## What happens Jane Addams reflects on her childhood, focusing on the profound influence of her father. She recounts early memories of a recurring dream about being the last person alive responsible for making a wagon wheel, her adoration and fear of embarrassing her father, a childhood confession of lying, her first sight of urban poverty, and her father's teaching about the death of Joseph Mazzini, which instilled in her a sense of international moral kinship. ## Themes in this chapter ### Moral Development and Ethical Living Addams explores childhood guilt, confession, and the formation of moral conscience through her father's guidance. ### Class and Economic Inequality Her first sight of urban poverty prompts a childhood vow to live among the poor. ### Democracy and Civic Engagement Her father's reaction to Mazzini's death introduces Addams to the concept of international moral and political solidarity. ## Character check-ins ### Jane Addams Narrator reflecting on her childhood experiences, dreams, and moral development. ### Joseph Mazzini Mentioned as a figure whose death her father mourned, teaching Addams about international solidarity. ### Polly Keyser Referenced as having confided a preferred funeral sermon text to Addams. ## Key lines > I dreamed night after night that everyone in the world was dead excepting myself, and that upon me rested the responsibility of making a wagon wheel. Addams repeatedly dreamed she was the sole survivor of humanity and had to figure out how to make a wagon wheel to restart civilization. _Illustrates her childhood sense of overwhelming responsibility._ > I remember launching at my father the pertinent inquiry why people lived in such horrid little houses so close together, and that after receiving his explanation I declared with much firmness when I grew up I should, of course, have a large house, but it would not be built among the other large houses, but right in the midst of horrid little houses like those. After seeing urban poverty for the first time, Addams asked her father why people lived in cramped, poor houses and resolved to live among them when she grew up. _Foreshadows her later settlement work at Hull House._ > I obtained that which I have ever regarded as a valuable possession, a sense of the genuine relationship which may exist between men who share large hopes and like desires, even though they differ in nationality, language, and creed. From her father's grief over Mazzini's death, Addams learned that people can be united by shared ideals across national and cultural boundaries. _Highlights the development of her internationalist perspective._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/twenty_years_at_hull_house_se/chapters/i-earliest-impressions - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/twenty_years_at_hull_house_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/twenty_years_at_hull_house_se/chapters