Discuss the way in which the following passage presents Paddy Clarke's response to the world in which he is growing up. How characterists of the whole novel are the techniques that Roddy Doyle employs in the passage?

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Domenico Clores

Discuss the way in which the following passage presents Paddy Clarke’s response to the world in which he is growing up. How characterists of the whole novel are the techniques that Roddy Doyle employs in the passage?

Throughout this passage, p53 – p55, you can identify that the author, Roddy Doyle uses several techniques in which to show how the world is developing around the young ten year old Paddy Clarke and how he responds to these changes. Doyle does this in numerous ways, initially and most importantly by what the young boy talks about.

On page 53, the paragraph beginning with, ‘Snails and Slugs…’ you can identify that Paddy Clarke is very young, you can easily distinguish this because of the topics he mentions and how he introduces them. This is evident in the opening paragraph. In this section he manages to talk about at least three dissimilar topics, this indicates that he cannot structure his speech probably. Doyle does this incredibly well because you can see that he is trying to state as many things as possible, signifying that he is still a young boy and maybe quite confused because of the events that are taking place around him, for instance the separation of his father and mother. So overall the opening paragraph is quite chaotic, for this to occur Doyle introduce several non – secquiters, meaning, when you go off at a tangent. ‘Picked him up with a towel and gave him a decent burial. The real name for soccer was association football’. This takes place throughout.

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Secondly the topics he talks about are quite normal for a ten-year-old boy, they are almost quite simple subjects, slugs, football and Indians are all mentioned immediately. This is a very good technique implied by Doyle because it just shows how young he is. Doyle does is very effectively and he manages to keep this going throughout the novel, for instance when the lady farted, quite simple subjects that keep Paddy amused.

Doyle’s use of language is also extremely effective, it again indicates, how young the boy is and how he may seem quite confused following the ...

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