Elizabeth Baines The Compass And The Torch

How is the character of The Boy presented in Elizabeth Baines’ ‘The Compass and the Torch’?
Elizabeth Baines presents ‘the boy’ in ‘The Compass and the Torch’ as an innocent young child who comes from a broken family and is going through the difficult transition of adjusting to a new father figure. It is clear that the boy is not finding this an easy transition as we see that he is very resistant towards ‘Jim’, the mothers new boyfriend and at the appearance of the father, he idolises him and cannot help making comparisons between the two men. He rejects Jim because of an undying loyalty towards his father. The boy had to force ‘himself to acknowledge Jims kindness and affirmation’. This reveals that he acknowledges the fact that Jim is trying to build a relationship between the two but he refuses to accept this because in his eyes, Jim has replaced his father.
Here, the boy is using a neologism through ‘Dadness’ which expresses his age and naivety towards the outside world, ‘drinking it in’ suggests the level of attention that he is paying to the father as he is absorbing ever detail about him. This is reflected when the boy is said to be watching ‘the way he strides to the gate, his calf muscles flexing beneath the wide knee-length shorts’. He idolises his father so much that every little detail is fascinating to the boy and worthy of scrutiny. He sees the father as the embodiment of perfection and seeks to emulate