Summary Of Charlie By Lee Maracle

Lee Maracle’s short story “Charlie” raises themes of imperial education on Aboriginal children in Canada and the harmfulness this standardized European schooling causes on the people, communities, and livelihood of Aboriginal tribes. In just a few short pages, “Charlie” manages to convey the severity of the situation for Aboriginal children taken to Residential Schools in Canada in an attempt to assimilate them into the foreign culture, religion and values of European imperialism. The children in the school are shown to have adapted to the situation by feigning stupidity and dull resignation, while quietly resisting in their own ways; Charlie, the titular character, escapes his imprisonment through daydreaming and, later, running away. The

The inability of the white teachers to see the potential of the students and to recognise that they deliberately act incapable of learning in order to avoid punishment is described quite cleverly in an omniscient observer point of view that allows for an objective interpretation of the events in “Charlie.” The physical and psychological abuse perpetrated against the students in order to force conformism is shown to be particularly damaging when, after the boys have run away to the uncle’s cabin, the narrator describes how those who return after finishing their education are completely unable to reintegrate into their communities and become a drain on their families, unable to support themselves, having never learned the essential skills of survival necessary to live off the land as their ancestors had for