Tony Kiser's The Bully: A Short Story

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The Bully, Character Analysis
“Tony. TONY THE BULL.” (Kiser 2). The Bully is a short story about a victim of bullying years later running into his old bully and seeing him in a wheelchair. Tony is characterized as mean, apologetic, and hopeless because of the actions and words he said. These three traits are important because they show how Tony acts and how he affects the theme of the plot. Tony is characterized by these three traits because these traits mostly affect how the story turns out. To begin, Tony is described as mean. Tony is characterized as mean because when Roger remembers Tony, all he remembers is bad memories of “TONY THE BULL”, which was Tony when he used to bully Roger. In the story, Roger has flashbacks of Tony bullying him in seventh grade. When Roger gets these flashbacks and thinks about what Tony had did to him. When Roger sees Tony, he thinks about: “How many times that sorry guy had made fun of my big ears in front of the girls in my class? How many times this sorry son-of-a-gun had laughed at me because I had no parents and had to live in an orphanage? How many …show more content…

Tony’s wife has to ask Roger if he can help Tony into the car. When Roger says "Jesus. He's so thin now. Not the big burley guy that I remember from back in 1957,” (Kiser 2) he’s surprised by how Tony turned out. Also in the story it says that “Tony had accidentally hit several plates knocking them off the table as he was trying to get into his wheelchair.” Tony used to be big and tall, but now he is small and is in a wheelchair. Even Tony himself says “What goes around comes around,” meaning that since he bullied Roger for so many years he feels he deserved what he got. He feels hopeless because he is in a wheelchair and disabled to most things similar to when Roger was an orphan. This trait is real important because Tony realizes his mistakes and causes him to apologize to Roger which leads to the progression of the

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