Charles Shirley Jackson

The book Charles written by Shirley Jackson is about a young boy into his first month of kindergarten. He would always come home and talk about a boy named Charles. Charles is a troublemaker, who was also a bad influence. Whenever Laurie talked about Charles, it would be about what he did, and how he would be punished. Everyone has been taught in their childhood to follow the rules or else there could be consequences. This is shown mainly in the book Charles. Charles is always getting into trouble. Every time that Laurie talks about him, it’s about how he gets punished and what he did to get punished. This is shown many times throughout the story and here are some reasons.

Laurie does bad stuff and blames it on an imaginary boy named Charles.”The teacher spanked a boy for being fresh” (73). Today Charles hit the teacher’s friend. “Charles Yelled during story hour and hit a boy in the stomach” (75) .This shows that Laurie is manipulating his parents even when he is only a child. This is significant because his parents believe Laurie, and they aren’t doing anything about it. The parents believe “Charles” is a bad influence but it’s really just. When you first meet Laurie

Anyway, this could connect to Stephen King and how he felt as a boy or even now in this world where we judge people on everything. In an interview with The Rolling Stone, Stephen says, “They're always dreams that focus on some kind of shame or insecurity” (Green, The Rolling Stone.) This shows how Stephen King connects with the way Charles feels about having to go to the bathroom in class, he connects with the insecurities and shame he must feel. So I believe that Charles could be a version of himself just in an alternate world he made for himself. Stephen sets it in a school to give a basis for old or young readers so that you can relate to it. He also creates a suspense that is the general focus throughout the whole short story. Lastly, King creates a simple read with non-complex sentences that any age could read. Another short story by Stephen King is “The House On

In the stories ‘’Seventh Grade’’ by Gary Soto and ‘’Charles’’ by Shirley Jackson, both discuss and identify how the settings helps develop the plot in each story. The setting in the story ‘’Seventh Grade’’ is the First day of school, Modern times, Middle school, French class. The story setting in the story ‘’Charles’’ is Kindergarten, 1948, PTA meeting, At home after school. These are the stories and authors and the settings of which are important to the plot. These settings affect the plot because without them Victor would not be able to get Teresa to be his girl on the first day of school and not get to talk to her in the French classes he will give her.

The madness that was Charles continued onto the following weeks. Laurie then continued to tell his parents about all the trouble that the boy was causing. His parents in shock just came to the realization that it was better to deal with someone like Charles early in his life rather than later. Charles was also a defiant young boy. To support this, in the story Charles “threw chalk” (346) and could no longer use the blackboard.

Foreshadowing convinces us that Laurie is Charles. For example, Laurie has to think for a while before he tells his mom about the first day of Kindergarten. Laurie’s mom states, “Laurie thought. ‘It was Charles’...”(Jackson, pg. 11). He did this so he didn’t have to get in trouble right away with his parents. Laurie invents Charles, so he doesn’t have to get in all the trouble with his parents at first, and he also invents Charles so he doesn’t have to take all the blame. He can just blame it on Charles. In Kindergarten, Laurie’s teacher tells him multiple times to stop misbehaving, but Laurie(Charles) doesn’t listen. He tells a little girl to cuss twice, he bangs a see-saw on a little girl’s head and makes her bleed, he throws chalk, he hit

The girl said it twice, resulting in the teacher rinsing her mouth out with soap. Then Charles “abandoned the little girl and said the evil word himself three or four times, getting his mouth washed out with soap each time” (349). This shows that Charles is malicious because he will do anything to get attention. Along with disobeying the teacher, Charles kicked the assistant teacher that came in to teach the class countless amounts of exercises. Although Laurie misbehaved throughout the story, he finally came to senses and started to behave like a proper kindergartner.

As previously stated, Laurie has an infant sister, and an infant child normally receives more attention from other family members. This causes Laurie to become attention seeking. Throughout the story, Charles is testing the limits with his teacher in an act to receive attention, by pounding his feet, throwing chalk, and other acts of misbehavior. We can assume that Laurie coming up with the character Charles is another act of attention seeking. “Thursday Charles had to stand in a corner during story-time because he kept pounding his feet on the floor” (346). This evidence supports the fact that Laurie is attention seeking. In addition to being attention seeking and having no role model, Laurie is not fond of his school

No individual would have ever thought that a cunning kindergartener would have the capacity to cover his tracks better than a stealthy murderer could have. The short story “Charles” was written by the author Shirley Jackson, she based it on her own experience raising her son. The main character is Laurie, he is a dishonest and rude little boy seeking attention. This took set in the 1950’s in Laurie’s home, school, and primarily in his kindergarten classroom. Nevertheless the conflict centered on Laurie, he did all sorts of disobedient acts, in contrast he told his guardians that a boy named Charles did these bad actions. One example would include throwing chalk. Specifically, Laurie did not adjust decently to kindergarten.

Laurie’s mother stated that “Charles was an institution” (348) in their family. By having the family constantly refer to Charles, fed into the attention that Laurie yearned for. Everyday when Laurie returned home from kindergarten, he shared a story of Charles, which ensured that he would acquire attention. One day Laurie came home and reported that Charles told a girl to say a curse word, his father asked what the word was. Laurie “whispered joyfully” (348) the word into his father's ear. Laurie was excited to share the bad word because he knew that he would receive a reaction from his

Later on, we see Laurie’s behavior change for the worst when he jokes to his father, “Boy you’re dumb,”(web) showing complete disrespect; furthermore, he then goes on to take a cookie and leave with his father shouting after him. His action shows how unruly Laurie really is being. We see this again on one occasion while he tells his parents about Charles once more. Sitting down for lunch, Laurie tells his parents that Charles has been bad again. Then, “he grinned enormously”(web) and told his parents that Charles has hit the teacher. When he grins, we can see that he finds Charles’s behavior amusing. His mother tries to blame his change in behavior on Charles. When Laurie’s mother goes to see the teacher, she mentions Charles and the teacher confusingly remarks, “We don’t have a Charles in the kindergarten.” (web) Because they are complete opposites at the beginning of the story, Laurie and Charles could be seen as foils. Charles is everything that Laurie is not, but as the story progresses, Laurie becomes more and more like Charles and now they can be seen as parallels. As a matter of fact, in the end, we learn that Laurie is Charles. We can assume this from when the teacher

Myra experiences the insensitivity and cruelty of her classmates in “The Day of the Butterfly,” a short story by Alice Munro. For example, Myra’s younger brother, Jimmy Sayla, needs Myra to take him to the bathroom, but one time he arrives too late and Myra asks Miss Darling if she can take him home because he has had and “accident,” drawing a response of “a muted giggling which alerted the rest of the class” (143) from nearby students. Rather than trying to be accepting of Myra’s misfortunes and perhaps unusual responsibilities, the other students in the class make fun of her for those reasons. The fact that the students begin giggling at Myra’s expense is a sign of utter disrespect towards the Sayla family and total insensitivity. In addition,

In the short story “Charles,” written by Shirley Jackson, the main character, Laurie, was a kindergarten student occupied with surprises. The story takes place in the 1950’s at Laurie’s kindergarten school and his house where he left to start his first day of kindergarten. The main conflict of the story is that Laurie did not behave well in kindergarten due to his desire of gaining his parents’ attention. Since Laurie had a younger sister, he may have felt she received more attention than he did so when kindergarten started, he spilled her milk. Laurie then invented the boy named Charles as a way of telling his parents what he did in school without being punished for it.

They sat there with their assaulted child, Lucy, a self-assured sufferer trying to stare me out, but failing horribly as she resembled a deceased cow glaring at the abyss. I remember looking back at my mother who was sitting on my left, but felt no embolden love from her brief glance, and let's not forget Mrs King's condescending sympathy without any innate compassion whatsoever. For the first time in my life I wished to be blind for being victim of such misused eyeballs; and as the discourse commenced, wished the same disabling fate for my ears. After a ray of pithy introductions, Mrs King said "I have spoken to Mrs Davies and Mrs Edmonds over the phone. Mr Edmonds, I'm sure your wife has explained the matter to you, and Mrs Davies you have my sympathies. Today, Daniel did a horridness thing during a class and as the incident was of a violent nature, I've brought you all here so we can get to the root of the problem, and determine how we, students, parents and teacher, can rectify the issue, preventing future animosity between both students and parents alike. Firstly, let us start with Daniel. Daniel, don't you have something to say to Lucy?" The first thing that unveiled in my theatre of thoughts was of the music variety.

These are some of the ways that Charles and the other June were being unkind . Charles was being mean physically . He hit the teacher at school . He also threw a piece of chalk across the room . The other June was calling June names at swimming lessons . She also said that June doesn’t have permission to use her name after she learned she had the same name .