Tansey Stafford Analysis

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Character Analysis I have chosen to write a piece on the character Tansey from the book ‘A Greyhound Of A Girl’ by Roddy Doyle. I have chosen Tansey above all other characters from ‘A Greyhound Of A Girl’ because she was distinctive (from all the other characters) in physical form as she is a ghost but predominantly because she seemed quite mysterious and was introduced by the author in a very unique way. Tansey is first presented in page 6 of the book, Mary O’Hara, the main protagonist, meets her while she is coming home from school. When she is first introduced she seems eerie and mysterious. The author describes her with ‘She was wearing a dress that looked like it came from an old film, one of those films her mother always cried at’. Which makes her appear old-fashioned like as though she is still stuck in the past. Mary meets Tansey quite a few times until her true identity is revealed as Mary’s great-grandmother. ‘A Greyhound Of A Girl’ is third person so I did not hear the story of the novel in Tansey’s own words. Although she does have a considerable amount of dialogue in the novel, the language she uses and the way she speaks, is not ghost-like but more like a young country girl (you would have never have guessed she was a ghost.) She is always wearing the same clothes in the book; ‘a dress that looked like it came from an old film’ and ‘big boots with fat laces’. I think that Tansey is a very loveable character in this book, as she was just a young woman who never lived to see her children grow up and is back to be with her dying daughter who is now in her 80s. Her past and why she came back makes the reader feel sorry for her and her children and this makes it quite an emotional novel. Tansey’s plays a crucial part in the story of the novel and is very important to the plot. Without Tansey coming back to find her daughter, Emer, (who is now a

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