Joyland

The story is narrated by 60-year-old Devin Jones looking back on the summer he was 21, which he thinks of as the last summer of his childhood. The young Devin has an almost childlike naïveté. He is too inexperienced to recognize that Wendy is breaking up with him and that she was never right for him in the first place. On mature reflection, the older Devin can recognize what the young Devin cannot—that Wendy doesn’t, and probably never did, love Devin with the intensity that he loves her. His obliviousness to Wendy’s failings is a consequence of immaturity, but his reaction to her narcissistic and insensitive rejection shows that Devin drastically underestimates his own worth; the scar left on him by Wendy’s rejection follows him through life as a confirmation of his secret insecurity.

Devin’s childlike quality is also reflected in his love of “wearing the fur” to entertain the children at the park. It is, however, a “mature” childishness that enables him to relate to the children when he is in costume as Howie the Hound. Fittingly, Howie is a German shepherd, a guardian dog, and Devin is in costume when the little girl in the red hat collapses and he saves her life.