The Watcher by Guy Vanderhaeghe

An Essay on Guy Vanderhaeghe`s short story , The Watcher

Guy Vanderhaeghe`s story , The Watcher ' is a rousing and intricate story of the eleven year-old boy Charlie . The plot reveals his initiation from innocence to experience when he was forced to stay on his grandmother 's farm

There are several themes in the story , all interacting in many different levels . One central idea is the person 's metamorphosis as a result of certain events . Charlie is the watcher ' in this story . He is a sickly boy and was always treated by his mother

with care . This has allowed him to acquire a knack of observing other people unobtrusively . I suppose it was having a bad chest that turned me into an observer , a watcher , at an early age , Charlie says . The image of illness presents the underlying perception of helplessness , both of Charlie 's and his mother 's . For him this means that he is powerless against life 's ebbs and flows . In a sense , his being is defined by what happens in his environment , him being a passive observer . This will all be changed by a turn of events later on in the story , where his character is transformed

Charlie 's initiation to the adult world was also brought about by him having a bad chest . Being sheltered in his house afforded him the time and opportunity to develop his skill of spying on people and an acquisition of knowledge of rumors and gossips . This made him form observations of the human nature "adults could be immensely interesting and entertaining if you knew what to watch for " This gave him to have an inadequate and limited understanding of the world , but his experiences on his grandmother 's farm changed this

In the story , a struggle arises between Charlie 's grandmother and Thompson , his aunt 's new boyfriend . Here we can we can draw a line in the clash between the urban sophisticate , and the hard-talking prairie dweller . Charlie made friends with Thompson , the latter teaching things about Buddhism and how to take advantage of people . This puts him inside the world of adult conflict and divided loyalties . This could be illustrated in the following exchange between Charlie and his grandma He must be an awful smart fellow to be studying to be a professor at a university " I commented "One thing I know for sure " snapped my grandmother "He isn 't smart enough to lift the toilet seat when he pees . There 's evidence enough for that

Charlie 's act of killing Stanley the rooster could be considered a metaphor foreshadowing the events leading to his betrayal of Thompson In this experiment with violence , he was able to come out of the shell of passivity and finally learns how it feels to take control of a situation , in this case , by determining whether the rooster lives or dies

The story 's ending comes as unexpected when he goes against Thompson When he was questioned by the police regarding the incident...