How is Laurie's behavior at home in "Charles" similar to Charles' behavior at school?
Shirley Jackson, in her short story "Charles," details the story of a little boy just starting school. The similarities between his behavior and Charles' behavior at home are very similar (which allows the engaged reader to realize, far before the end, that Laurie is Charles).
Multiple times in the text, Laurie's behaviors are very questionable. On his first day of kindergarten, Laurie leaves the house already a different person. Laurie's mother describes to readers the immediate difference between her pre-kindergarten boy and the boy leaving for school.
My sweet-voiced nursery-school tot replaced by a long-trousered, swaggering character who forgot to stop at the corner.
Already, her son has changed. This changes becomes even more apparent when Laurie returns home. The normally quiet (assumptive based upon the mother's tone) boy is now "raucous" and shouting. This behavioral change is denoted by the use of the word "suddenly." It...
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is as if Laurie's behaviors immediately changed the moment he began his first day of school.
As the week went on, Laurie spoke "insolently" to his father, had used the Lord's name in vain, and been destructive. (These are all behaviors the reader can assume have come with his attending school.)
Laurie's behavior at home is very similar to Charles' behavior at school. Charles is loud, disrespectful, and hard to manage. As readers finish the text, they (as well as Laurie's mother) come to realize that Laurie is Charles. Essentially, Laurie's behaviors at home are so similar to Charles' that engaged readers are sure to pick up on the similarities.
What are some similarities between Laurie and Charles in the story "Charles" by Shirley Jackson?
"Charles," like Shirley Jackson's most well-known short story, "The Lottery," has a few surprises and, certainly, a surprising ending. Within the story, however, Jackson has left a fair number of clues that she has created a kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde story or, more precisely, a Jekyll-and-Jekyll story. Laurie and Charles, who appear as distinct characters throughout the story, seem to mirror each other so precisely that we begin to suspect, as Laurie's parents do not, that Charles is Laurie's alter ego.
Our first encounter with Laurie is, by itself, no clue to the story's ending, but it does foreshadow the behavior later attributed to Charles. After announcing his arrival from school with a "raucous shout," Laurie
spoke insolently to his father, spilled his baby sister's milk, and remarked that his teacher said that we were not to take the name of the Lord in vain.
Implicit in this description is that Laurie has taken the Lord's name in vain, but Laurie's parents assume, as they do with all of Laurie's explanations, that he is not the culprit. Later during this exchange, Laurie describes the boy Charles being punished for "being fresh. . . . He was awfully fresh." In hindsight, we understand that Charles's punishment is most likely Laurie's for having cursed, but taking the description at face value, we can also see that Laurie and Charles seem to have many traits in common.
On the second day, Laurie reports that Charles has been spanked because he hit the teacher. Laurie then says to his father,
"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.
This joke, which has no real humor, is meant to belittle his father and is, in effect, a metaphorical attack on his father, much like Charles hitting the kindergarten teacher. We also need to attend to Jackson's choice of words to describe Laurie's laughing "insanely," an unusual choice for describing anything related to (presumably) a six-year-old child.
In a third instance, Laurie comes home and "yelled all the way up the hill" that Charles was bad again. Charles's infraction? He had yelled so loudly in school that a student from another class had "to tell the teacher she had to make Charles keep quiet." At this point, the behavior of Laurie and Charles is identical—they are both yelling—but the culprit, of course, is still nominally Charles. Laurie, however, as he sits down to lunch, greets his father with "Hi, Pop, y'old dust mop," another insolent verbal attack on his father, completely consistent the behavior attributed to Charles in his attacks on schoolmates and other teachers.
At this point in the story, Jackson has provided enough clues for a cautious reader to conclude that Laurie and Charles are actually just Laurie, who has managed to divide himself psychologically into two equally antisocial characters.
Laurie shares many similar character traits with his pseudonym, Charles, in the short story and reveals his rude, offensive behavior at home while interacting with his parents. On the first day of school, Laurie arrives home and immediately throws his belongings on the floor. He speaks "insolently" to his father, leaves the table without being excused, and blatantly disobeys his father by taking a cookie. Laurie's insolent comments and rude remarks are similar to how he addresses his teacher at school. Charles is continually being spanked for getting "fresh" with his teacher, which is an idiom for having an attitude and speaking rudely. At home, Laurie continually torments his father by calling him "dumb" and an "old dust mop." Laurie also fills his wagon full of mud and proceeds to pull it through the house. Laurie's insolent behavior and disobedience at home are clues that indicate Charles is his pseudonym and he is the person misbehaving at school, which comes as a shock to his mother when she discovers that there is no Charles in Laurie's class.