Grief, Pain, and Misfortune through Troubled Times

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In Annie Proulx’s novel, The Shipping News, the narrator presents the character of Quoyle. Quoyle is a troubled child who faces many problems as a child. His unusual childhood leads him to act different and be viewed differently by others. Quoyle is represented with vivid images and this helps signify the impact those events had on his life. Proulx characterizes Quoyle as a character whose failures in life are marked by his inability to fit in with the norms of society and those around him.
The descriptions of Quoyle provide us with a character who has so many flaws and struggles, that he is unable to live a normal life like those around him. Quoyle’s problems started at childhood, and the narrator provides us with vivid images of his childhood. “Raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns” and “survived childhood” show us that it was not easy for young Quoyle. With these descriptions we get an image of how his childhood was harsh through Quoyle moving around through different towns in bad areas. The narrator continues on to Quoyle’s later life and shows through repetition the amou...

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