Literary Essay: “Charles” Shirley Jackson’s realistic fiction story, “Charles,” takes place mainly in Laurie’s kitchen, where he talks to his parents every day about how his day was. Laurie is starting Kindergarten and this makes his mom super emotional. On the first day when Laurie comes home, he talks about a disruptive boy named Charles who is in his class. Before long, each day when Laurie comes home it becomes almost routine that he informs his parents what bad thing Charles did that day in class and what punishment the teacher would give him. This problem creates a theme of when a person tells you something, it may not always be true. In the story, the mom goes through a problem of jumping to conclusions, based on what she hears …show more content…
Jackson gives off the theme when a person tells you something, it may not always be true, by using foreshadowing and irony. Foreshadowing is used by the author dropping hints in different parts of the story. She does this so that after revealing the revolution of the real troublemaker being Laurie you can look back at how the author provides evidence to support it. For example, on page 2 of the story, Laurie calls his dad an old dust mop and his parents never say anything about it and just go back to talking about Charles. In comparison to the resolution, it turns out that Laurie 's at home behavior matches the same description of Charles disrespectful behavior at school. When you look back you see how quite a few times when Laurie is home, he is disrespectful to his parents and doesn’t have any proper manners. Along with using foreshadowing, the author also uses irony, which is used towards the end of the story when the mom is trying to find out who Charles the troublemaker 's mom is at the P.T.A. meeting. The author writes on the last page, “Laurie adjusts very quickly. I suppose this time it’s Charles’s influence.” The irony of the situation is that right away the mom is thinking that Laurie 's behavior is coming from having Charles around but really Laurie is the one causing problems in school. These two extra devices used by the author helped create the big theme of the