A Boy in His Shadow

Boy in His Shadow is a collection of four short stories that features four male protagonists struggling to deal with personal identity. Often these men have lived in the shadows of their fathers' God's expectations and their own misunderstandings of masculinity, reflecting the growing generational divide and the effects that divide has on coming of age. The stories deal with the changing times, alienation, personal faith and societal misunderstandings of manhood. Each man is at a pivotal part in his life, where circumstance has forced him to reevaluate who he is and where he's going. The stories are set in the rural and suburban areas of modern-day central Florida, coastal Carolina, and New England. The thesis emphasizes the importance of narrative perspective, counterpointed characterization, and thematic unity within a traditional, linear structure. Each story is told by a first person retrospective narrator who has learned from his past (the events of the story) but is still searching for answers. Each character's true nature is revealed both by the retrospective narrator and by the conversations and actions of the present action that force the protagonists' secrets, shortcomings and lies to the surface. The stories' antagonists draw out these revelations by putting the protagonists in uncomfortable positions, forcing them to face themselves, an idea called "counterpointed characterization" in Charles Baxter's Burning Down the House (112). All of the stories are unified by a common theme - the quest of the modem man to find personal identity. Within the stories, the themes of love and loss, control and acquiescence, acceptance and rejection are juxtaposed in each man's life.