The short story, "The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face," revolves around the main character, Jack, and how messed up his life is. But first, the author lulls the reader to sympathize with jack but eventually ends up showing how truly twisted jack is. In The Smile on Happy Chang's Face, written by Tom Perrotta, the author uses first person point of view to allow the audience to enter Jack's mind and know his innermost thoughts and feelings to see Jack's flawed perception of the world.
In “The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face”, Jack’s life seems to be utterly miserable. Jack seems to hate anybody who has a happy life. For example, his neighbor Carl, is living a happy life. He has a beautiful wife, a nice-paying job, and a happy family. Carl did nothing wrong to Jack, all Carl has done is try to be nice to Jack and have normal conversations with him. Jack though acknowledges the fact but simply says, ”And I had come to despise Carl, even though he’d done nothing wrong to deserve it except live his own happy life right next to my sad one, where I had no choice but to witness it all the time and pretend not to mind.” (Perrotta 2) It seems that Jack despises anyone that has a better life than him ever since his wife and kids left him. Jack truly misses his family and attempts everything to get them back. Now don’t feel that bad for Jack now. Throughout the story, Jack looks back at what happened to his family. He recalls the night he broke his son’s nose and revealed what he was thinking at the time and how he feels about it now. “Later, when I had time to think about it, I was proud of him for fighting back. But at the time, it just made me crazy. I couldn’t believe the little faggot had hit me. The punch I threw is the one thing in my life I’ll regret forever.” (Perrotta 10) Jack regrets everything he has done wrong with his family and tries to make it up. He attempts to call, write letters, emails, and leave voicemails b...