Charlie By Lee Maracle Character Analysis

Charlie by, Lee Maracle is about a young Indian boy who goes to a catholic school. Charlie dreams about going outside and exploring but the school will punish him if he does. One a day a group of kids including Charlie sneak out to go to one of their families houses. When they get their Charlie leaves to go to his family’s cabin. Unfortunately his long journey is cut short by frost bite and he dies of hypothermia.

The main conflict is person vs person. The priests and teachers at the school did not let Charlie have freedom, because of that Charlie went against the rules. He risked his life to do what he enjoys. Eventually he died doing what we finally wanted to do, go outside. It’s a weird way to end a conflict but in the end it seemed like the only way to let him do what he wanted.

Charlie is a persistent, adventurous dreamer; he will risk his life to do what he dreams of. He is persistent because he won’t let the school stop him from looking out the window. When he was looking out the window and his teacher called on him he “was [staring]

He “had grabbed his fall jacket” instead of his winter in the rush to get outside (177). His forgetfulness causes his death. If he had grabbed the proper coat he would have not gotten frost bite and felt the growing desire to sleep.

The best quote to sum up the story would be “repeated thrashings … had convinced him that staring out the window … was not the way to escape the sterile monotony of school” (171). It shows how the school did not want the kids to stray from their school work, but also shows that Charlie had strayed and tried to dream about the outside world before and was punished. The entire time Charlie was there he wanted to stray from his work and in the end he did.

The outdoors is repeatedly mentioned, the animals and mostly snow. It represents the freedom that Charlie is begging for. He is forced to go to a catholic school and not learn to hunt like his