Hi! This is Charlie.

“Old Boys, Old Girls” starts off portraying its protagonist, Caesar Matthews, in a negative light and eventually shows him in a positive light. The first line-- “They caught him after he had killed the second man” (417)-- gives a very bad impression of Caesar: not only has he killed two people and has been caught, but he doesn’t even warrant a name. He’s not even the subject of the first few sentences of his own story, which put “they,” as in the police, “the law,” and “the victim” as the sentence. Caesar is an anonymous criminal cast into the prison system. By the end of the story, he becomes personal and sympathetic. His traumatic childhood is explained on page 440, shortly after he discovers the woman he loves has died (438). He has been contrasted against his wealthy, successful relatives (432-3) and wrongfully judged as a child molester by his sister (437-8). In the end, he walks away to start his life again (443). The story transforms an anonymous criminal into a sympathetic human being. Its suspense at first is generated by shocking statements, like the first line and “During much of the trial he remembered the name only of the first dead man” (417) but at the end, the reader has grown to sympathize with Caesar and the story’s suspense comes from the reader’s concern with his future.