Exploring The Elements Of Paddy Clarke

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Exploring the Elements of Paddy Clarke HA HA HA Roddy Doyle, the writer of Paddy Clarke, explores the childhood of an innocent ten year old boy, Paddy Clarke, who lived in Barrytwon, a town in North Dublin, in the 1960s. The story is a semi-biographical novel of Roddy Doyle’s childhood. The writer has used numerous writing styles and techniques to craft the novel creating many elements. For example the use of writing in an under-developed child’s point of view and this allows a modern audience to empathize with the children at the time, who lived in poverty, and Roddy Doyle’s childhood. Exploring the elements is the topic of this essay. One child’s point of view would be the when the parents are auguring while the family is on a picnic. “-Where’s Ma gone to? I asked / Da sighed, and turn a bit so I could see his eyes … Ma got in … - It was too wet for Cathy, she said after a while, to Da. He started the car.” In the Paddy’s point of view the parents aren’t arguing and is curious about why they are staring at each other and then Mother gets out of the car in the rain. And he believes it was for ice-cream. But it is obviously clear to the reader, that there was an argument between Mother and Father and then Mother got out. It is this type of writing that makes the read empathize with Paddy. And compared it with their own life and what would they do if this happened to them when they were younger? There are more elements than just the viewpoint of a child, for instance the way it was written. Roddy Doyle has used short sentences throughout the novel rather than long and complex sentences, which creates the child’s limited perspective for the reader. Also Doyle doesn’t use sophisticated language or descriptive writing like in books such as The Woman in Black. Furthermore, the novel is written in the first person, allowing the reader to know what Paddy Clarke in
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