Smile Roddy Doyle Summary

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Bullying is always something cruel, but unfortunately it happens a lot. It can happen everywhere, for everyone. Most of the time, the victim of the bullying is always someone who is vulnerable. That is the exact scenario we see in the short story “Smile” (2016) by Roddy Doyle. In the short story we meet Victor, who battles against the allegations, from his fellow students, who accuses him being a “queer” because of his teacher’s statement.

The protagonist in Smile, is a young boy who goes to a Catholic school. We follow the young boy Victor, as he competes against the accusation of him being stamped as a homosexual, because of his teacher 's statement about him. The narrator is the main character, and he can be described as a dynamic character, …show more content…

The author uses the plot twist technique, foreshadowing and the red herring technique. “The woman walked in. She put a bag on the desk. – She’s a teacher! “Where’s fuckin Murphy?” “Dead.” (e.g. Page 5, Line 188-191) This quote is an example of the plot twist technique, because the reader beforehand did not have any kind of conception, that Brother Murphy would die at the end. The plot twist leads the way for the red herring and the foreshadowing technique. Throughout the story the author keeps dropping different elements, that makes the reader think that there will happen a form of abuse against the protagonist. But instead all these elements, leads to a completely different point: “Victor Forde, I can never resist your smile.” (e.g. Page 1, Line 18) “Never smile back at him.” (e.g. Page 2, Line 64) “Never get below five – don’t give him any excuse to keep you back after the bell.” (e.g. Page 2, Line 65) All these quotes are examples of foreshadowing, and they all mislead the reader to think, that the main point in this story is about an abusement that may happen to Victor, as if Brother Murphy was a child predator. But on the other hand this mislead could also be seen as if the author indirectly wants to visualize two major problems, on one hand the abusement in schools, and on the other hand the effects of vulnerable victims being

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