Who Is The Character Of Paul Fisher In Edward Bloor's Tangerine

In the novel “Tangerine” by Edward Bloor, the main character, Paul Fisher faces numerous challenges that shape him into the person he is now. Some of these challenges he caused himself, but many were from the people around him, the people he knew, his friends and even family. Two people that are responsible for making him who he is now are his parents. if it weren't for them, Paul's everyday life would be dramatically different. Many of the choices made by his parents were horrible, many of them affected paul very negatively.

One of the most notable choices in the book to effect Paul is Eric's choice to ruin Paul's eyes, but Paul's parents were the ones that let him get away with such a horrible thing. Paul is facing his brothers consequences every day, not knowing that his parents have kept the secret of what actually happened for

His dad clearly favored Eric, Paul’s dad was living his own dream of playing football through his son. But since Paul didn't play football, the only person he could do that through was Eric. This voided his judgment of Eric and made both parents oblivious to who Eric truly was. The author very clearly portrayed this when Paul was having a conversation with his mother and he says “Actually mom, he wasn't killed by a tree branch. He was killed by Arthur Bauer, on orders from Erik.”(pg 246) Another time when Paul's parents had no idea what was going on was when they had no clue that Erik and Arthur were going to get hurt for what they did, they didn't even know what Erik and Arthur did. “Just wait until monday, Dad. Erik is going to get hurt. Arthur Bauer, too” (pg 232) All of this just proved to Paul how clueless his parents were to who Eric really was, he couldn't really blame them for loving Eric more. Paul changed, he just learned to live with it and to not care too much about what others think, that's how Paul improved, it made him who he is