Stuntboy, in the Meantime Literary Elements

Illustrated Children’s Novel.

The time period is not specifically identified, but setting is of utmost significance to the story through the physical location in which the story is primarily set, which is the large inner city apartment building Portico and most other characters call home: Skylight Gardens.

The narrative perspective is conveyed for the most part through a deceptive third-person point-of-view. The opening pages quite clearly establish a first-person narrator is telling the story. The adoption of a seemingly external objective third-person storyteller is purposely deceptive in order to build up the impact of the book’s ending in which the narrator reveals—partially—his identity: He is the person who trained Portico and taught him how to use his superpowers.

The tone of the book is very conversational and light-hearted which contrasts with an underlying mood of constant tension stimulated by the incessant marital squabbling of Portico’s parents.

Protagonist: Portico Reeves, aka Stuntboy. Antagonists: Herbert Singletary and the domestic difficulties caused by marital strife between Portico’s parents throughout the entire story.

The major conflict of this story is how all the multiple smaller individual conflicts Portico faces connect together to produce “the Frets.” That is the name Portico gives to a condition the rest of the world knows as anxiety. The conflict at the heart of this story is how simple daily existence in the modern world is one capable of producing a near-constant state of anxiety in children.

The story comes to a climax when Portico realizes that “the Frets” never affect him when he becomes Stuntboy in the same moment that he reveals his secret identity as Stuntboy in front of his parents for the first time.

The narrator’s revelation that he is the person who trained and taught Portico how to use his superhero powers is subtly foreshadowed at the book’s opening when it becomes clear that he is privy to all of Portico’s secrets yet is never identified as any character with whom Portico interacts.

The narrator’s admission that “I clearly can’t keep secrets (or secret secrets)” instantly becomes an understatement of enormous proportions as he proceeds from that very point to reveal every secret he knows of Portico’s life.

What is most interesting about the use of allusion in the story is the curious way this device is used to hint at time period in which the story takes place. For instance, there is a total absence of allusions to the existence of cell phones, social media, or the internet. In addition, the television sets portrayed visually in the illustrations not only aren’t flat-screen, but are equipped with dials for changing channels and an antenna for tuning in stations. While these clues allude to the story taking place prior to the 2000s, one of the television sets in the illustrations is tuned into The Andy Griffith Show, but the accompany text identifies this 1960’s sitcom as an “old TV show.”

The most significant example of reoccurring imagery in the story is that almost every single time Portico’s parents are present in a scene, they are arguing or bickering or squabbling or simply just ignoring the impact this constant state of their union is having upon their son emotionally.

n/a

The building which Portico calls home is described using this technique as “the biggest house on the block. The biggest house in the whole wide neighborhood. Maybe even the biggest house in the whole wide city.”

n/a

The state of nervous anxiety which Portico calls “the Frets” is personified throughout the story.