Back to Front - by Nicola Barker

Parenting, identity and growing up is very important themes in this story. Parents play a major role in the development of their child. It is the parents who have the responsibility to give the child love and make it feel safe and special. It is important that the child gets a perfect amount of attention because too little attention can give the child a low confidence and make the child feel unloved and not important. Whereas too much attention can make the child socially incompetent and too confident which makes it self-centred and arrogant – like Nick.
The short story is written as a small biography of Nick, starting with his birth and ending with his death. It takes place in British middleclass suburbia, and the action seems to take place in the 21. century. The story begins with Nick’s birth, where Nick is introduced as a special baby because all his peculiar insides are back to front. His mother Grace is introduced as an overprotective woman who loves her son, and is very proud of him being different. Then Nick gets older and begins in school. Suddenly when Nick is a teenager, his mother remarries. Her husband Thomas becomes her new fascination, because she loves him very much, and where Nick is different on the inside, Thomas is visibly different. He is exciting, interesting, and Grace thinks he is “different, not ordinary like she and Nick were, but oh so special” (p. 2, l. 52). She gives Thomas all her attention and Nick starts getting into trouble, to regain his mothers attention. He starts claiming that he committed a various number of crimes, but the policemen could prove it was not him, and started calling him the boy who cried wolf. Nicks cry for Grace’s attention does not work, but it ends up fatal when he in the arrest annoys a boy called Lyndon, who ends up killing him.
Nick believes he is special and superior to his classmates and the people around him. “ He was so convinced of his own superiority” (p.2, l 43). That is the reason why people interpreted him as being arrogant and self-centred, and his classmates start bullying him. Nick cannot understand why his classmates do not notice he is different, and needs more attention than them, even though he is not that different. He is slightly anatomically different, but otherwise a perfectly normal youth. Nicks isolated upbringing has made him very socially insecure. He expects the same attention in school, as he got at home from his mother. Until he started in school Nick has been living in his own little world, being his mother’s darling, and meaning everything to her. Then he is released into the real world, and his connection to his mother is broken by the new stepfather Thomas, who now gets all her attention. It affects Nick very much because his whole self-image and identity has to change, so that he can adapt to the situation. His choice of rebellion against this lack of identity is to make a fuss about himself and crave attention. He just knows he's special. He must be because he's been told so many times. He does not manage to control the situation instead he tears himself apart and ends his life in the cell with Lyndon.
The character Lyndon is the boy who unintentionally kills Nick. He committed the robbery in the jewellery store and becomes mad because Nick lies and says he did it. Lyndon overreacts, and his behaviour is very aggressive and even though he does not intent to kill Nick, he wants to harm him seriously ( p.3, l 110)– which indicates that he has some serious anger management problems, but also that he did not want to be a murderer.
In the beginning of the story Grace is a loving mother, who takes good care of her son and pampers him a lot. Her big amount of attention gives Nick a smartass and arrogant personality, which is partly in control until she stops giving him affection and attention. His classmates also stop teasing him a start ignoring him, and suddenly he doesn’t get any attention at all. Nick reacts very violently and starts lying and saying he committed some of the crimes from the news paper. He does everything he can to impress or scandalize his mother to get her attention, but no matter what he does it doesn’t work. Grace has not done a good job at raising her child, and she is not a good mother. All through Nick’s childhood she has been there for him, and then suddenly when he needs her the most in puberty she bails on him, and chooses Thomas instead, which makes her a bad parent. She does not even react when her son lies to the police and ends up in a police cell. She should have caught the fact that he was just trying to get her attention. “Nick was very special. Yes, he was. He was" - these are the words that makes the short but very powerful ending. Even though the words are so simple, they leave the reader with no doubt about some of the themes of the story - the search for individuality, identity and acceptance.
Nicks biggest life ambition is fulfilled when the plot takes a weird turn and the story ends – he became a mystery and very special individual in the doctor, the coroner and the assistants eyes.
In a way the police men ended up being right, that Nick was the boy who cried wolf. In the beginning he was loved and feeling good, but then after his lies and him not caring anymore, he ends up dead because of his lies.