The exposition to Shirley Jackon's short story "Charles" is full of foreshadowing. Laurie undergoes a transformation from "sweetvoiced nursery-school tot" into a "long-trousered, swaggering character," and the ways that he acts toward his parents and siblings are a whole lot like the ways he says Charles acts. As Laurie gets into his stories about Charles, he also smiles a lot when recounting the incidents but takes on a grim demeanor when he reports that Charles is being good, which is also an element of foreshadowing.
The family's adoption of phrases like "did a Charles" or "being a Charles" is an example of idiom.
The conclusion of the story reveals the most important literary device to the narrative: situational irony. When the family learns that Charles and Laurie are the same person, they're stunned; this was not the outcome they expected. The entire plot arc of "Charles" was built to establish the idea that Laurie wasn't Charles at all.
One literary element Jackson uses that is crucial to making the story work is the first-person point of view. The story is told entirely from the perspective of Laurie's mother. This means we as readers only see and hear what Laurie's mother does, which allows for the surprise ending.
On a more granular level, Jackson uses imagery to place us in certain scenes. Imagery is description that uses any of the five senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. One example would be the following:
my husband...caught his elbow in the telephone cord and pulled telephone, ashtray, and a bowl of flowers off the table.
We can visualize the flowers, phone, and ashtray falling off the table.
Finally, Jackson uses the literary device of a cliffhanger to end the story, leaving us only with the information that there is no Charles. That puts the burden on the reader to figure out that Laurie is Charles. Leaving spaces that allow a reader to participate in constructing a text can be especially satisfying.
The primary literary element Shirley Jackson uses in "Charles" is irony. All of the outrageous misbehavior that Laurie attributes to Charles is actually his own transgression, as his parents discover at the end of the story.
A close reading reveals foreshadowing, such as when Laurie's mother, in the story's opening, describes her son as "a longtrousered, swaggering character who forgot to stop at the corner and wave good-bye to me." Because Laurie is no longer the angelic preschooler he once was, this is a clue that perhaps the behaviors he describes as Charles's are more likely his own.
Because the narrator and her husband have become so curious about Charles's long-suffering mother, they have this conversation as the PTA meeting draws near:
“Invite her over for a cup of tea after the meeting,” he said. “I want to get a look at her.” “If only she’s there,” I said prayerfully. “She’ll be there,” my husband said. “I don’t see how they could hold a P.T.A. meeting without Charles’s mother.”
Here Jackson uses humor, because as the reader has come to suspect, and will soon know for sure, it is the narrator herself who is being discussed, unbeknownst to her. The word "prayerfully" is especially humorous, since the prayer is bound to be answered, but in a way that she does not expect.
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