The Last Circus

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The Last Circus Leaving childhood and entering adulthood, is a very sensitive period in children’s life. Through the childhood, everybody experiences those life-altering moments. These experiences are quite magical for each one of us. For example, it can be playing at the football field with your father, when the summer comes along or your first bicycle ride on your brand-new bicycle. When a young boy or girl have these experiences, they belong to them and no one else. Also these experiences will become some sort of a tradition to do every year until… The day you realize that there is something else outside of your cocoon, and that something is reality. Not the illusion you have lived in. The short story takes place in the 1950s and it is about the difficult period of transition from childhood to adulthood. We follow a young boy called Doug, who is in an important stage of his development. Douglas’ family consists of four members; the father, the mother, Doug himself and his brother Skip. Skip seems to be older than Doug does, because of the conversation Doug and Skip have, at the end of the story. (“What’s wrong, Doug? ... Just the circus … What about it? … Nothing – except it won’t come again. (Line 187-192)). What makes him older is that he cannot imagine how Doug is feeling, maybe he does not remember that he has been in the same emotional situation before. Or maybe he is too young to decide on Doug’s life-changing event. Besides the brother, there are also the parents. Doug’s relationship with the parents is very mixed. The mother is a typical housewife in the fifties. She cooks for her husband and children. The father is an independent businessman, with his own company. He is very afraid of the atom bomb, because he has read that a new bomb, which could wipe out Chicago, has been made. (“... they’ve got a new atom bomb that would wipe Chicago clean off

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