Compare And Contrast Charles And The School

What would you do if the school you went to is filled with constantly dying animals? How would you feel if one of your close family members kept lying to you? Well, in Donald Barthelme’s story “The School” and Shirley Jackson’s story “Charles”, these are just typical questions about the two related stories. In this essay, it will be argued that the stories “Charles” and “The School” are similar in perspective, but different in tone and solemnity.

Firstly, they share similarity in perspective. Throughout both of the short stories, it is written in first person perspective. The narrators in both stories depict the scenes from their eyes, and it can be seen in many examples. In “The School” the narrator has just seen the new puppy in their

In the story “Charles”, Shirley Jackson writes about a boy who lies to his mother by blaming his wrongs onto an imaginary boy named “Charles”. The language used is casual and informal, and the tone that Laurie speaks in is rude and impolite. “‘Look up,’ he said to his father. ‘What?’ his father said, looking up. ‘Look down,’ Laurie said. ‘Look at my thumb. Gee you’re dumb.’ He began to laugh insanely” (lines 25-28). In this quote, Laurie is supposed to joke around with his father but the tone and language the author uses is disrespectful. However, the tone in the story “The School” is humorous. The story starts off with a funny, stammering sentence. “Well, we had all these children out planting trees, see, because we figured that.. that was part of their education, to see how, you know, the root systems… and also the sense of responsibility, taking care of things, being individually responsible” (Barthelme, lines 1-4). There are several ‘...’s used in the quote in order to show the stutter of the narrator’s lines. It can be inferred that letting the children have the sense of responsibility was a very bad idea as all the trees died later. Thus, the language and tone used in the two stories