Bud, Not Buddy
Christopher Paul Curtis (1999)
“A ten-year-old orphan boy runs across Depression-era Michigan armed with a suitcase of flyers, a set of rules for survival, and the stubborn belief that a jazz bandleader is his father.”
Character Analysis
Bud is ten years old and has been taking care of himself since he was six. His mother died when he was small, and the foster care system has failed him repeatedly. He responds to this not with rage (which would be accurate but unproductive) but with a systematic, humorous pragmatism embodied in his rules. He is not precocious in the annoying sense — he doesn't know things he shouldn't know — but he is preternaturally practical. He is also, underneath the rules and the deadpan, deeply lonely and trying very hard not to be. The loneliness is what drives him to Grand Rapids, and the rules are how he survives the journey.
Child-vernacular, rules-driven, pragmatic. Non-standard grammar ('funner,' 'knowed') without self-consciousness. Formal titles for adults as a sign of respect and strategic deference.