Charles Shirley Jackson

565 Words2 Pages

“Charles” “Charles is a short story written by Shirley Jackson that tells about a mischievous young boy named Laurie, who was beginning kindergarten. The literary work takes place in the 1950s between home and school. Laurie misbehaved because he was struggling to adjust to his new surroundings. He was a brother to a younger sibling who received the majority of attention from his parents. Consequentially, he was troublesome to the faculty. Therefore, he was able to share such stories about the school day’s events to lure his mother and father in interest. However, this caused a rise of disrespectful and inappropriate behavior. Laurie was greedy for the responsiveness he failed to obtain. He arrived home from kindergarten each day to eagerly inform his parents about a fellow student in his class named Charles, who often disobeyed the teacher’s instructions and insulted his peers. To illustrate, Laurie modernized his actions diurnally. For example, expressing that one Thursday Charles had to stand in a corner and the following day was deprived of blackboard privileges. Additionally, on the second day of school once Laurie returned home for lunch, he instantaneously exclaimed what Charles had done that day as “he grinned enormously” (Jackson, …show more content…

He placed his own rebellious arrogance into the image of a potential peer. He achieved this by giving a daily appraisal of Charles–induced events, and each day providing more excessive details than the last. On the second Monday, “he shouted as he came up the hill; I was waiting anxiously on the front steps” (346) justifies the pure interest of the mother in her son’s acquaintance’s habits. Moreover, Laurie’s mother contemplated if kindergarten was too thrilling for her son while discussing the circumstances with her husband throughout the majority of the following evenings. She correspondingly addressed Charles’s potential influence on Laurie

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