Analysis On "Doofus" By Mark Morehead
“Doofus”
by Mark Morehead uses a boy named Billy as the protagonist who’s in grade two
and learning how to tie his shoes. The antagonist is Billie’s big fat jerk
brother Todd. Todd is older than Billy and likes to pick on him, for example
calling him “Doofus” all the time. Todd causes Billy to have internal conflict
by teaching him to tie his shoes the wrong way on purpose and calling him a
“Doofus” because he can’t tie his shoes correct. I would call Billy the exact
thing his older brother calls him a “doofus”, cause at the end of the story there
was a funny plot twist. Billy came home right proud telling his brother to look
at his shoes he had keep tied and even finally tied up right since leaving that
morning. Until Todd said “Nice job, Doofus. Whose shoes are those, anyway?” To
me the protagonist is a kid who in my opinion would probably come home with the
wrong head if it was possible.
The
symbolism in “Doofus” would be the “knot” on the shoe the protagonist is
wearing. In the story it says “And now this... a knot”. This is the quote of
where Billy’s journey in school of keeping his shoes tied begins. I think the
“knot” represents the ability of being fooled and as the “knot” gets tighter
and tighter it represents a victim getting pulled towards the lies of the enemy
like a black hole is sucking the victim into the dirty lies. The antagonist,
Todd is the one who created this “knot”. This symbolises the internal conflict that
Todd had created upon Billy. Also the setting of the story causes a major role
in helping the readers understand what Morehead flash fiction is really all
about. The majority of the story takes place in Billy’s school while he's in
grade two. To me, the setting of the school helps give the symbol of learning.
Billy had been learning how to tie his shoes and going to school trying to keep
them tied up, he learns one day how to finally tie his shoes correctly. Also
the timing of this story is when Billy is only young and learning new things.
As a child a lot of kids seem to make mistakes like Billy done by bringing home
the wrong shoes. I personally did something the same like Billy, once when I
was younger I brought home the wrong book bag from school. So by doing silly
things like what Billy and I have done gets people labeled a "Doofus"
just for making a simple mistake.
The overall
theme in the story “Doofus” is failure. I believe failure would be the correct
theme to suit this kind of short story because of the way the protagonist Billy
seems to have failed a couple times. One of the first failed moments he had was
when he keep failing into his brothers way of teaching him how to tie his shoes
by just creating a knot and never knowing the difference that it was wrong. Another failure that Billy
had was when one day he came home with the wrong pair of shoes on from school.
The title “Doofus” adds the effect of creating the overall message because
usually people call someone a “Doofus” if they did something wrong or weird. Therefore
the title of the short story is indicated towards the boy, Billy. Billy was
quite the “Doofus” no matter how hard he tried to do something right, he always
seemed to mess it up. Therefore failure is the perfect word to use for the
theme of this short story. Billy teaches the readers of this story to try their
best and if they don’t succeed to try, try again.
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