Compared to Jackson’s other work, “Charles” is distinct in tone and genre. Jackson is primarily a horror and mystery writer, and her other stories, like “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House, are deeply rooted in those genres’ tropes. “Charles,” on the other hand, is much lighter and even comedic, without the same suspenseful and foreboding stylistic elements. The matter-of-fact tone and casual exchanges between characters carry the story forward in a light-hearted way. Laurie comes home and is rude to his father, and his anecdotes of Charles sometimes involve the latter’s violent antics, but the subject matter never approaches anything too dark. Still, Jackson’s affinity for mystery is detectable, as the story’s ending is indeed mysterious. The reader can only retrospectively sift through scattered clues.

Because the story’s ending is ambiguous, critics have offered different interpretations. The most common interpretation is that Laurie has invented Charles as a scapegoat—a lie to his parents to cover up and take the blame for all of his mischievous behavior at school. Laurie and Charles would then be the same person, and all Laurie’s anecdotes of Charles’s mischief are actually about Laurie himself.