“The third day- it was Wednesday of the first week- Charles bounced a see-saw on to the head of a little girl and made her bleed,” (1). In the short story “Charles” written by Shirley Jackson, Laurie, the main character of the story, is a young kindergartener who is able to run around causing trouble at school and at the same time, pretend that it is only another boy in his class that is making the trouble. “Charles” teaches you that parents do not know everything about their child even though the child lives in the same house as them. Laurie’s parents do not know what he is like at school. Laurie is flamboyant, and arrogant yet creative and those characteristics make him the perfect troublemaker.
Charles is actually Laurie which means that Laurie is arrogant because he talks about himself a lot. Every day, Laurie comes home and tells his parents about the day’s events, the topic that always comes up is Charles. The way Laurie talks about Charles makes him sound like he is someone who makes a great friend or that he is actually popular among other school children but his parents think that Charles is made up of “toughness and bad grammar” (1). Laurie talks about Charles to the point that it has become a “routine” (2). When children talk about someone very much, it usually means they either admire that person or the complete opposite like a child would go on and on about a superhero. The language he uses to describe Charles to his parents also suggests that he thinks Charles is not a bad influence. He mentions to his mother that even though Charles gets into trouble and the teacher warns the class not to play with him, everybody still does. Laurie makes it sound as if everybody thinks Charles is likable enough for everybody else t...
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...a row and he has a lot of ideas. Laurie has a very imaginative train of thought.
In conclusion, Laurie, who really has become Charles completely, has too much pride in himself and his actions which makes him arrogant. He is creative because he is bursting with different and colorful ideas although they may not all be benevolent and he loves attention; he always finds a way to take the attention and does not realize how much others mind his behaviour making him flamboyant. He demonstrates all these attributes throughout this story as he is telling his parents about Charles. Laurie’s parents do not see this about Laurie until the end of the story which up until that point; they believe that he is a quick adjuster, a wearer of bibs and corduroy overalls, when in fact, the son they are raising is now Charles.
Works Cited
Jackson, Shirley. Charles. 1-3. Print.
"Charles" by Shirley Jackson shows how Laurie used Charles to cover his troubles. First Charles starts his day by choosing bad clothes over good, like how in the text in states "My sweet-voiced nursery-school tot replaced by a long-trousered, swaggering character" (Jackson 1).By this first quote you can see Laurie is already making a transformation from a sweet lovable boy to a swaggering character like how Charles is. After that Charles had to stay after school for getting in trouble but laurie had to stay too! It states “Charles had to stay after school. And so all the children stayed to watch him.” What interests me about this quote is how Laurie said all the children stayed too even though they weren't in trouble. Finally, They
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The story “Charles” by Shirley Jackson is about a young boy, Laurie who is misbehaving in his kindergarten class but covering it up by saying it was another boy, Charles who isn’t real. His parents kept believing him until they realized it was him who was misbehaving during school. Middle schoolers should read “Charles” because it is interesting to see all the bad things the boy does and it is weird to find out at the end how Laurie has been misleading his parents. Some people say the story is boring because it is about a boy in kindergarten.But, it is not because it shows a lot of foreshadowing during the story to see if charles is really charles. Middle schoolers should read the short story “Charles”.
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James, A. (1998). From the child's point of view: Issues in the social construction of
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Laurie did not obtain enough attention, in a result, she misbehaved for attention. Laurie was trying to be cool and get attention so he misbehaved at school on the first day. He went home, then told his parents that Charles was bad that day and he was
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