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Parental Myopia In Shirley Jackson's Charles

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“Charles” a story by Shirley Jackson, highlights the the narrator's son Laurie and his “classmate” Charles. Due to a serious case of parental myopia in the narrator and her husband, they fail to see that Charles is merely a clever device used by Laurie to fool his parents. Laurie uses this to his advantage and describes his own doings using the character Charles. His parents do not realise this until the very end of this story when the teacher explains that there is no such boy called Charles in her class. I believe that Jackson is trying to say that identity is not only your name and who you are, but it is also what you do and some fail to see things the way they are and not the way they think it is.

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