"Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha"

Analytical Essay # 26198

English > Analysis
Literature > English

A review of Roddy Doyle's novel "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha".

2,377 words () | 1 source | MLA | 2002 United Kingdom

Paper Summary:

This paper examines Roddy Doyle"s novel, "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha", a powerful and compelling story of life in 1960s Ireland through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, Paddy. It looks at how the book is purposely written almost entirely in dialogue, creating a fantastic range of slang, vulgarisms and colloquialisms. It analyzes how within the book, Doyle explores and deals with many issues, including Paddy and his hatred for his brother, peer group pressure and his mother and father's rocky and deteriorating marriage as well as many other themes. These include the loss of childhood innocence, the family, the marvelous nature of a child's imagination, the harshness of life and the cruelty of children.

From the Paper:

"The first techniques which one could mention, is the obvious slow change of the tone within the book. Doyle creates, for the first 200 pages of so, the dominant tone of happiness, delight and childish mischief. "I had a book on my head. I had to get up the stairs without it falling off. If it fell off I would die." Nothing is particularly serious, Paddy continues to harass his brother and play with his peers, and has yet to understand the seriousness of his mother and fathers continuous quarreling. However Doyle cleverly changes the tone, towards the end of the novel, through Paddy's dialogue, not only to show that Paddy is growing up, as he most definitely is, but also to create a tone more serious, anxious and tense. "They were fighting all the time now. They said nothing but it was a fight .The silences were worst, waiting it to start again, or louder." "