Structure

The structure of the short story “Smile” by Roddy Doyle is easy to follow and presents an event from the narrator’s life—becoming the object of the affection of a Catholic teacher. This leads to the narrator being bullied until one day when he decides to respond to the teacher’s attention. After that, the teacher dies.

Title

The title of the story, “Smile”, is intriguing at first because it does not reveal much about the plot; we do not know who smiles, at whom, or why. Reading the story reveals that the title is symbolic for most of the plot because it is the narrator’s smile at his teacher Brother Murphy that sets off a chain of events which lead to the narrator being bullied and even to the teacher’s probable suicide at the end:

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Beginning

The short story begins with an exposition which introduces us to the characters of the narrator and Brother Murphy, and to the context of the events: “Brother Murphy was about forty-five, but it was hard to put an age on adults. I didn’t see them as younger or older than my father. All men seemed to be that age.” (ll. 1-2); “We, the pupils, never spoke French. We read and wrote but learning to speak wasn’t on the curriculum.” (ll. 8-9)

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Middle

The middle of the short story is not entirely chronological because the narrator first describes the smiling incident and then goes back in time to describe his first day at school: “Then, last class, first day, before going home to my mother’s questions, the French teacher, Brother Murphy, smiled at me, the first adult to smile all day, and I smiled back.” (ll. 75-77)

The rising action focuses on the way Victor is bullied, after the children in his class realise that Brother Murphy is attracted to him: “He’d smiled at us all, but he’d announced that I was the one whose smile he couldn’t resist. I knew the others would kill me.” (ll. 105-106); “I was kicked, punched, spat on. For a minute. Only a few of the kicks really hurt, and the thumps were just to my arms and chest.” (ll. 115-116)

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Ending

The ending of the short story presents the falling action, when the children return to school after the Easter holiday to discover they have a female French teacher: “We got off for Easter a week later and, the first French class after the holidays, a woman walked into the room. Brother Murphy never came back.” (ll. 174-176)

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