Summary: Lynda Barry's "The Sanctuary of School"

Lynda Barry’s short memoir, The Sanctuary of School, is a recollection from her early years as a child in elementary school. Barry illustrates that, as a child, she grew up in a less than stable home environment, and describes how she went unnoticed in that household. One day, she leaves early in the morning to go to school, and shows up to school several hours before the school buildings, a collection of portables, opens. She waits on the playground until she is greeted by the morning janitor, who lets her come with him to open the school and get it ready for the day. In that moment, when young Barry is helping the janitor by pushing his trash bin and turning on all of the lights in all of the classrooms, Barry recalls that she feels a sense of importance and belonging, which is more than she ever felt at home. Soon after assisting the janitor, young Barry is greeted by her teacher, who is surprised to see her there at all. Her teacher suggests that she go to the back of the room and draw a picture. Barry does, and as she does so she describes a feeling of peace that she encounters while drawing. The picture that she draws is supposedly the same one that she always draws: A house, with a blue sky and a yellow sun, happy and peaceful. This is meant to symbolize Barry’s yearning for a more stable home environment, and how she is able to escape to her ideal world by creating it in a drawing. Overall, the story seems to be a statement regarding the importance of funding the arts in public schools, because for many children in similar or worse positions than the young Lynda Barry, art can often times be the only method for finding peace in a chaotic world, both at home and at school.