Charles Shirley Jackson's Life

Charles is a poorly behaved kindergartener, but does not even exist at all. Shirley Jackson wrote a short story about a misbehaved young kindergartener called “Charles”. This young child is named Laurie and misbehaves on multiple occasions for numerous reasons. Furthermore, this short story occurs in the home and school of a family in the 1950’s. Laurie newly began attending kindergarten, however, he did not adjust to this change in a positive manner. In fact, he acted out a considerable amount of times for various reasons. One of these reasons being that he simply did not enjoy kindergarten immediately. For example, Charles had already been misbehaving on the first few days of kindergarten such as “The third day… Charles bounces a see-saw on the head of a little girl and made her bleed” (Jackson 346). Therefore, it can be assumed that Charles was poor at adapting to change and acted out on the account of not liking his transition to
kindergarten. Also proved in “For over a week Charles was the teacher’s helper; each day he handed things out and he picked things up” (448), occurring a few weeks after kindergarten began, showing that after Charles finally adapted to the change after some time, with the exception of a few lapses. Charles may have been poor at adapting to his new environment, but this was not the only reason he acted out. Not only did Charles act out for his inability to adapt to school, but it likely also occurred for the attention that came with it. In fact, Laurie likely wanted the attention because of recently becoming an older brother to a baby sibling and did not receive nearly as much attention as he once had, thus he began acting out for a topic of conversation with his parents. Laurie had brought up Charles’s recent actions after school and after seeing how effectively it captured his parents’ attention, continually brought up Charles every day after as a chance to talk to them. Even so he made sure they knew he had something to talk about by coming home in a loud and disturbing manner “the front door slamming open… and the voice suddenly becomes raucous shouting.” (345) to guarantee his attention. Not only did Laurie misbehave by physical actions at school for attention and poor adaptation, but he also acted out in one additional way. Finally, Laurie also misbehaved by lying to his parents about himself, as well as Charles.
Laurie lied about who Charles was to be able to talk to his parents about something without them knowing that Charles did not exist and the he was the one committing all of the acts that were claimed to be Charles. Laurie had lied about Charles in every scenario that had truly been him, both positive and negative, this means that Laurie had lied to his parents quite a lot, making himself a rather large liar. One of these many instances occurred when “Charles yelled during story hour and hit a boy in the stomach and made him cry.”(347), once again lying about who had really completed those acts. Even so, Laurie’s mother still found out about Charles at the PTA meeting when “ No one mentioned Charles” (349), and after confronting the teacher learned that Charles did not exist and that Laurie had committed all of the misconducts. This reason shows that Laurie is a liar as well as a misbehaving attention seeker and shows how he had
misbehaved. In conclusion, Laurie had misbehaved on numerous occasions for multiple reasons. Moreover, Laurie is a liar, attention seeker, and a poor adapter, these are the contributors to why Laurie was such a troublemaker on multiple accounts and to why she did not adapt to kindergarten positively. Although, all of these actions are resolved when Charles becomes the teacher’s helper and Laurie’s mother discovered that Laurie is Charles. These occurrences and traits describe who Laurie truly is as a young boy in kindergarten trying to do what he thinks must be done to fit his needs.