Paperboy Themes

In Paperboy, Victor learns that family is a bit more complicated than he's always assumed. When he finds his birth certificate in his parents' bedroom, he realizes that the man he's considered his...

Even though Victor feels socially stunted by his stuttering in Paperboy, he has some true blue friends that stick with him no matter what. Rat is his best friend and treats him no differently from...

Communicating clearly is difficult for our young hero, Victor, in Paperboy. Because of his stutter, Victor has a hard time talking to people without feeling horribly self-conscious. This is why he'...

Victor's life in Paperboy may be difficult in some ways what with the stuttering and all, but he's lucky in that he has a lot of people who love him. His parents are always there for him, even when...

In Paperboy, Victor learns that you can't trust everyone—and especially not Ara T. From the beginning of the novel, Mam continually warns Victor against talking to Ara T, but he doesn't listen to...

When Victor first sees Mrs. Worthington in Paperboy, he's totally smitten with her—after all, she's a very good-looking woman. He thinks that she leads this awesome glamorous life, but soon he re...

Victor is afraid of a lot of things in Paperboy—public speaking, Ara T, asking his father about the birth certificate, to name a few—but despite all these fears, he faces the uncertainties in h...

Because Paperboy is set in the segregated South, there are a lot of race issues simmering below the surface. Victor is just a boy and doesn't notice a lot of the rules that separate white people fr...

Victor is reaching adolescence in the summer of Paperboy, and because he's growing up, he starts to look at his world a little differently. Over the course of a summer, Victor starts to form opinio...

During his summer of self-discovery in Paperboy, Victor encounters a man named Mr. Spiro who is seriously eccentric. Mr. Spiro lives in a world of books—he's constantly reading and talking about...