fool's Paradise
...lem “I told you not to! she said. But didn’t explain why…..”(Dell 302) This is referring to the envelope and how she had her son leave the envelope nameless, thus to keep him unaware of the obvious fact of them being poor. The family financial problem was easy to spot. For example in the open passage of the story the author states “That fall, before it was discovered that the soles of shoes were worn clearly through, I still went to Sunday school. (Dell, 301)” School is just starting up for the new year and the young boy has no new clothes. It’s the norm for kids his age to go back to school shopping and get all new clothes for the beginning of the school year. But yet gain the young boy is uniformed of the fact that his family is poor. For fear of the Sunday school telling the young boy the truth about his family, his mother pulls the young boy out of school. “I didn’t go back to school that fall. My mother said it was because I was sick…. I stayed cooped up in the house, without any companionship. (Dell 302)” The young boy is even being deprived of his own youthfulness, of school and playing with friends. The little boy is left shelter from the outside world. The selfless mother sees this as persevering her son form the reality of the real world and keeping him from feeling the suffering that she does. In the end this protective style shown by the mother is going to destroy the kid emotionally. Toward the end of the story the child is beginning to hint at the reveling signs that he is poor. The final straw for the naive young boy was when in all his free time he paid close attention to the calendar. He was very curiose as to why his parents never mention anything to him about Christmas. In curiosity the boy asked, “This is Christmas Eve, isn’t it? (Dell 303)” When he got no response from his parents the notion of being a poor boy hit him like a to...