Charles Baxter's “Charity” is good literature because it allows the readers to understand others more clearly and see different perspectives on different incidents that occur to them; there are messages and themes throughout the story that the readers can determine and learn from; the words the author used to describe the characters as well as the different settings aide the readers to conceptualize the story as if it were a clear painting; and the story burrows into great detail about the characters to almost the maximum limit, giving the readers copious amounts of information about the characters that give them a general idea about why the characters behave the way they do or the why they are where they are.
Baxter's “Charity” mainly revolves …show more content…
Unless used as medication, and even then one must be extremely careful with not taking even slightly more than necessary, one must stay away from drugs. This story provides an excellent example for what happens to a person who uses drugs. Matthew Quinn used to be a very kind, generous, and loving man before, but his addiction to the drugs turned him into someone with a “ruined soul,” (Baxter, 12), who happens to go through extreme withdrawals of “jabbered and shivered and cried out and tried to fight me,” (Baxter, 12). However, drugs do not only affect the person who uses them, they also affect those around them. Matthew Quinn's boyfriend, Harry Albert, who thought Matthew Quinn was “my boyfriend, my soulmate, my future life,” (Baxter, 6) in the beginning of the story, felt his love for Matthew Quinn evaporate - “I did not love him anymore. I felt fairly certain that I had gone through a one-way gate and would not be able to love him again,” (Baxter, 12). Relationships change and one can end up very lonely (which could be a motivation to continue doing …show more content…
An example of this is when Matthew Quinn went to look for the drug dealer, Black Bird, at the bird of a club called 'The Inner Circle' - “The next Wednesday, he found Black Bird at the end of the Inner Circle bar near the broken jukebox and the sign for the men's room. The club's walls had been built from limestone and rust-red brick and sported no decorative motifs of any kind … The peculiar orange lighting was so dim that Quinn couldn't figure out how Black Bird could read at all,” (Baxter, 2). Another example is “... and I saw him near a window whose slatted light fell across the face of a feverish young woman who lay on a bed under mosquito netting. She was resting quietly with her eyes closed and her hand rising to her forehead in an almost unconscious gesture. She was very thin. You could see it in her skinny-veined forearms and her prominent cheekbones. On one cheekbone was a J-shaped scar,” (Baxter,
Baxter's “Charity” mainly revolves …show more content…
Unless used as medication, and even then one must be extremely careful with not taking even slightly more than necessary, one must stay away from drugs. This story provides an excellent example for what happens to a person who uses drugs. Matthew Quinn used to be a very kind, generous, and loving man before, but his addiction to the drugs turned him into someone with a “ruined soul,” (Baxter, 12), who happens to go through extreme withdrawals of “jabbered and shivered and cried out and tried to fight me,” (Baxter, 12). However, drugs do not only affect the person who uses them, they also affect those around them. Matthew Quinn's boyfriend, Harry Albert, who thought Matthew Quinn was “my boyfriend, my soulmate, my future life,” (Baxter, 6) in the beginning of the story, felt his love for Matthew Quinn evaporate - “I did not love him anymore. I felt fairly certain that I had gone through a one-way gate and would not be able to love him again,” (Baxter, 12). Relationships change and one can end up very lonely (which could be a motivation to continue doing …show more content…
An example of this is when Matthew Quinn went to look for the drug dealer, Black Bird, at the bird of a club called 'The Inner Circle' - “The next Wednesday, he found Black Bird at the end of the Inner Circle bar near the broken jukebox and the sign for the men's room. The club's walls had been built from limestone and rust-red brick and sported no decorative motifs of any kind … The peculiar orange lighting was so dim that Quinn couldn't figure out how Black Bird could read at all,” (Baxter, 2). Another example is “... and I saw him near a window whose slatted light fell across the face of a feverish young woman who lay on a bed under mosquito netting. She was resting quietly with her eyes closed and her hand rising to her forehead in an almost unconscious gesture. She was very thin. You could see it in her skinny-veined forearms and her prominent cheekbones. On one cheekbone was a J-shaped scar,” (Baxter,