27 pages • 54 minutes read
Shirley JacksonCharles
Shirley JacksonFiction | Short Story | YA | Published in 1948A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Charles
As much as he is a character, Charles is also a motif. He helps explain the central idea of appearances’ frequent disharmony with reality—or, more specifically, exteriors masking an underbelly. Laurie creates Charles in a bout of negative attention-seeking behavior as a scapegoat whom his parents can blame for Laurie’s own misdeeds, and whenever Laurie tells his parents about Charles’s various offenses, he seems happy if not jubilant. When he later switches gears and tells his parents that Charles has turned a new leaf and has started helping the teacher, he reports this with a “grim” demeanor, suggesting he feels the event is bad news. Displeased with Charles’s temporary harmlessness, Laurie quickly reverts his invention to a source of mayhem, restoring the exterior-underbelly dynamic. Moreover, while Laurie’s parents imagine that Charles lives elsewhere and is fundamentally unlike them, he is actually in their home and is their very flesh and blood. This illustrates the idea that scapegoating—locating evil only outside oneself—is not only futile but involves hubris.
Laurie’s School
The school symbolizes the dichotomy of truth and lies. It is a school, so it should be a place that is committed to the truth. However, it is the setting of Laurie’s first great deception in life—the creation of Charles. Laurie’s parents are in the dark, thinking Laurie goes to school each day to a place of truth and virtue. In reality, the school—because it is removed from his parent’s scrutiny—is an opportunity for Laurie’s chaos, lies, and deceit. However, at the end of the story, when Laurie’s mother goes to the P.T.A. meeting and meets Laurie’s teacher, the school reverts to being an institution of truth as the teacher’s revelation reacquaints the narrator with reality.
Charles’s Mother
Charles’s mother, like Charles, is as much a motif as a character since her imaginary presence is the prime target for the narrator’s hypocritical judgments. Laurie’s parents immediately think of Charles’s mother when they are told about Charles’s bad behavior and wonder what sort of mother could let her child run rampant and cause such mayhem. Jackson subverts expectations in the end, of course, and forces the narrator’s recognition of her judgmental posture and her preconceived notions about motherhood and misbehaving children. Like Charles is a scapegoat for Laurie, Charles’s mother begins as a scapegoat for Laurie’s parents, but she becomes a mirror. Though the narrative stops short of revealing this subversion’s effect on the characters, the subversion has the potential to be the much-needed rude awakening about their own family.
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By Shirley Jackson
