Analysis of Paul Beatty's "White Boy Shuffle."

There are just some things that distinguish the good authors from the bad ones. Those things include character development, language choice, plot development, and making a story relate to everyone. Because Paul Beatty has all four of these in his book, "The White Boy Shuffle", he must be classified as a good author. Now I realize he has other books and they could all be horrible, or even better than this one, so you can't base talent of an author on one book(if that were the case and you based my skills off of this paper you would assume I am horrible, which I like to think I am not). But for the sake of making my life easier I am going to base Beatty's talent off of this one book.

The biggest thing I noticed from this book is the character development. This book is based on the character Gunnar Kaufman's life, so of course character development is needed since everyone changes drastically from elementary school to adulthood. Beatty, though, almost turns that development into an art form. Every event that happens to Gunnar adds to his personality in the book and affects his actions for the rest of the story.

Now the development of Gunnar is great but what was the development of his childhood friend Scoby. "I'd never seen Scoby mad about anything. I knew he was agitated about the upcoming game, but I didn't know what to say to him. He was always the one that dispensed advice and remained in control...Scoby's eyes reddened and he started to sniffle. He was cracking under the pressure. Watching his hands shake, I realized that sometimes the worst thing a (guy) can do is perform well"(P. 117-118). This was a huge turning point for the characters, another strong development they had because Gunnar was forced to become the strong one, which he wasn't used to, and Scoby was finally showing a weakness to him. Scoby seemed to keep changing throughout the story and, as the quote shows, his actions really affected Gunnar and vice versa. Reading about how the two friends