I Spy

Despite the amount of traumatising murders Charlie comes across, he is determined to understand people that are different from himself, providing him with a sympathetic and compassionate personality. Charlie's efforts to understand the minds of others does not go to waste as he successfully learns in-depth details about Jack Lionel "I don't know who this man is, but he didn't kill anybody. I've done everything wrong. Mad Jack Lionel isn't a criminal. He's probably not even mad. He's just old and sad and poor and lonely" (Charlie Bucktin p234). Through the sympathetic side of Charlie, a softer and more vulnerable component has been added to the novel, expressing Charlie's curiosity towards understanding Jack. A transition between Charlie regarding someone as dangerous and cruel compared to a harmless and nostalgic man is clear throughout chapter seven of the novel as Charlie begins to develop a further and deeper understanding of Jack's personality traits and motives. Instinct is a powerful aspect of the novel as it begins to delve into the innocence of the mind of Charlie when he originally assumes the worst of Jack before having a moment of realisation where Jack is no longer the criminal but instead a lonely, old man. After evaluating the multiple aesthetic features that constructed this particular novel, the innocence, understanding and sympathetic components are highlighted and contributed to the description of Charlie as a typical

As the child continues to accomplish a variety of different accomplishments in the mainstream society, the people already familiar with the child from the county will perceive him entirely different than others who lack knowledge of him. The child’s “uncle will still call [him] Roy Boy” and the “corn may grow so high if you stood in the field you’d disappear, the fact aiming your eyes down the road”. This demonstrates the difficulty of altering the perception of certain people who are already familiarized with the child. These people are unable to abandon their initial perception of the boy due to their strong, ineradicable association with him; rather, they will find it more awkward and uncomfortable seeing a completely different suave gentleman due to his significant change. Regardless of how many achievements the child has accomplished, he will never be able to erase his past as a little boy in the county. Even if the boy never comes back to visit his county again, the past will linger with him for the rest of his life due to his inability to change his innate characteristics that shape him as a person today. It is because of the boy’s past that he is able to adapt and continuously achieving numerous different

It is due to Charlie’s frequent arguments with his Mother and advice from his Father that he learns to be diplomatic and control his emotions. For example, when Charlie’s mother is angry at him for sneaking out of the house at night Charlie could’ve just kept quiet and taken his punishment, but he kept arguing back out of anger, further winding up his mother until she forced him to dig up a hole, fill it back up again, and then go to bed without dinner. After this his father gives him the valuable advice to sometimes let the other person win the argument and make it better for both parties, which Charlie takes to heart. Learning to control your emotions and be diplomatic even when you disagree is a key part of growing up and maturing.

In the novel Charlie takes each person’s words into his heart and ponders about them thoughtfully. Nostrils Charlie’s best friend sticks by his side and is loyal at all times. While Nostrils is doing a job with Charlie, Nostrils gets beat up by Barlow and Nostrils tells Charlie to run which lands Nostrils in hospital. This teaches Charlie to be loyal and listen to what his friends tell him to do. Another incident is where Daisy Molony who is a prostitute tells Charlie to ‘use that money fer somethin’ good’, the filthy money that Squizzy Taylor gave to Charlie, for doing jobs for him. Mr Redmond is another strong character in Charlie’s life, teaching Charlie boxing, giving Charlie a gramophone and training him to run in the Ballarat mile. This shows Charlie, through an old man’s eyes, love and compassion. Mr Redmond dedicated a lot of time and energy for Charlie. All these people show Charlie a fragment of properties and qualities. From himself and spending time with his friends he learns how to nurture the feeling s of others but not the feelings one

Bragg’s dejected tone when addressing his father’s latest demeanor is satirical as the Father’s past behavior is anything but celebratory. The author’s conscious decision to compare his memories of the Father to that of a “man” and a “monster” depicts the two emotions Bragg intended to invoke from his readers through the use of tone: contentment and fear. He wanted his readers to share his contentment with his father’s past demeanor, though distressing. In contrast, Bragg hoped his readers share his fear of his father’s past demeanor, despite his innate urge

The character of Charlie (being the protagonist) is who the readers are directly linked too, as we are taken on a journey with him through his actions, feeling, ideas and perspectives. His journey also includes his maturation/ coming of age as he does not escape from his issues and problems however he faces them head on. “I have no idea where we’re going. The further we move, the keener my apprehension grows. Still, there is something emboldening about being awake when the rest of the world is sleeping. Like I know something they don’t.” The passage has shifted from the description of late-night Corrigan to the thoughts/feeling of Charlie. He has been called to a mysterious place by a peculiar figure called Jasper Jones. As they travel further and further away from Corrigan the more Charlie’s worry and doubt comes to him about where they are travelling, what they might be doing and why did Japer choose him over everyone else? The readers are unaware of why Charlie is following Jasper blindly and so is Charlie. This is a stage in the narrative where Charlie’s progression as a character starts. The mood is created here from the events that are happening and from the readers attachment to the protagonist. The thoughts of the characters are reflected as the feeling from the readers. In some ways we already understand what might happen based on different reading from

This entire book highlights both the high and low points in Charlie’s life, and how he changed and has not changed all from his constant value of friendship to his many realizations, based on the one experimental surgery that gave him insight on what life would be like if he was “normal”.

Charlie begins to hang out with Sam and Patrick and is getting in the routine of going to football games and then going out afterwards to celebrate. Afterwhile he catches feelings for Sam and the way he expresses them further deepens our understanding of his depression. Instead of going with the flow and not telling her about the dreams he had about her, he professes his love for her in the form of sharing his dreams and telling her just how he feels. Perhaps, this isn’t all his fault because when Sam tells him that she’s too old for him, he becomes obsessed with his love for her and can’t stop thinking about how perfect she is in his eyes. The only thing this confession has done for him is make his feelings grow and send him in a downward spiral of

     The book also focuses on Charlie’s home life. Charlie has two siblings that make him feel invisible. There’s a hidden resentment in the tone that is used by Charlie to explain his sister and brother. But by the end they have managed to form a certain bond that Charlie has always wanted.

In a different fashion, Charlie is also similarly thrusted upon the knowledge that his way of life has been negatively affected by the war. While working on the farm like any other day, the neighbors slave, Gabriel, who was spending time with his son Boy, came with inauspicious news that Boy had been taken by Union soldiers. Here Charlie learns that his son who meant so much to him because he was born the day his wife died, has been taken which puts an immediate stop to his thinking that everything is okay. This further promits him, like Joe, to go and search for Boy who represents the past and normal life that has been taken away by war. Even though Joe and Charlie find out what the war has taken from them in unmistakably different ways, they both begin searching for a part of their previous life that has been forcibly taken away from them because of war.

After falling out with his friends because of his mistake with Mary Elizabeth, Charlie became even more depressed than he was before Sam and Patrick. He turned to smoking as a way to grieve at the loss of his friends and the loss of his previous life. Charlie becomes ever out of it. When his sister needs him to drive her to the abortion clinic, he feels important and depended on and as he reported this was the first he felt needed. This repercussion with his sister helped him

Like Gil and Fix, a similar metamorphosis occurs in the character of Charlie. Even though Charlie is one of the most important characters, he does not appear until the last few chapters of the novel. In his own words, Charlie describes his change:

In the memoir written by Rick Bragg called All Over but the Shoutin’, the writer talks about when he visited his father in a small house in Jacksonville, Alabama. The father he remembered is not the man that he encountered. The man that he expected to be was a young, black-haired, well-groomed man of yesteryear. Instead, he found an old, grey hair, smelly man. Bragg’s no longer recognized his father. Just as the father’s physical appearance had changed dramatically so did the attitude. The author memories of his father clashed with the person that he sees in front of him now. The narrator view of his father has changed since last seeing his father, for now, it’s old vs. young, sick vs. healthy, trying to be a father vs. neglectful.

While the ultimate goal of a parent is to provide the best possible upbringing for their children, when children become too reliant on the support of a parent, they become a dependent mirror of the parent – as Ralph became the mirror of his father. Father figures in society are commonly associated with stereotypically masculine traits and mentalities, such as quick-action, dauntless, and dominant ideologies. Ralph’s close alignment with his father suggests that he also emulates these traits. In conversation with Piggy, Ralph believes “when [his father] gets leave he’ll come and rescue [them],” (8) effectively using his father a crutch. Because Ralph strongly depends on his father – and it is implied through this quote that his father frequently meets this dependence –

His mother had taught him to not look at girls, and after the operation when he started to develop more feelings, he had a hard time talking to Alice Kinnian because he had the thought that he liked her, and that he shouldn’t. Due to the hard nature of his mother, Charlie’s emotional life was not maturing with his new-found intelligence. Emotionally, he was still a little kid. “I knew she would give herself to me, and I wanted her, but what about Charlie?” Whenever he would get near Alice, he would start to panic because he felt that there was still a part of his old self within him, keeping him from taking his relationship further with