Summary

“Smile” by Roddy Doyle tells the story of Victor. He describes Brother Murphy, his French teacher from his secondary school, a Catholic school in Ireland.

Starting school when he is 13 years old, the narrator is both excited and frightened. He does not know the school well and as first-year students he and his friends are often bullied by others. One day, in the first weeks of school, the class asks Brother Murphy not to give them homework, and he makes a remark about being unable to resist Victor’s smile.

After that, all the children begin to bully Victor, calling him a ‘queer’ (an offensive word for a homosexual). The narrator wonders if Brother Murphy decided to like him from the first day of school, when Victor smiled at him because Murphy...