Characterization in Charles

Laurie’s lies In the story “Charles” , Shirley Jackson vividly creates an entertaining main character, Laurie, through a description of his own looks, clothing, his own words, and actions. Shirley Jackson shows Laurie as having three main personality traits. Laurie can be best described as rude, impish, and disruptive. Early on in this story Laurie shows us his rude behavior when he starts kindergarten. Laurie is rude to everyone. He is rude to his teacher, his dad, and his mom.

He says to his dad “hey pop you old dust mop”. That’s rude most dads would have slapped him. Laurie shows another trait later on in the story “impish”. He got in trouble and the whole class stayed to watch what would happen. He also makes up this character Charles he tells his mom that “Charles does whatever he really does at school. ” That is just some really impish attitude. Laurie also has a third trait disruptive. Laurie disrupts the whole class a lot in this story. He tells a little girl in his class to say a bad word. ” The little girl did and got in trouble. Then Laurie goes ahead and says the word himself and gets in trouble. That shows disruptive behavior. In our world today kids are the same. They all do stuff to get attention. This story will bring to parents attention how their kids act when they are not around. All kids today can have the same characteristics as Laurie does rude, impish, and disruptive.