Basic Trope: A character is revealed to be illiterate in a setting where literacy is the norm.
- Straight: Bob never learned to read.
- Exaggerated: Bob doesn't know any letters.
- Downplayed:
- Bob can only read simple words.
- Boris, waiting for his connecting flight to San Francisco at Haneda from Moscow, never learned Kanji, Katakana or Hiragana.
- Justified:
- Bob never learned to read because Bob is only 4 years old.
- Bob lives in a country with a poor educational system.
- Inverted: Bob is the only one who learned to read.
- Subverted: Bob doesn't know how to read... because he forgot how.
- Double Subverted: That was a lie on Bob's end, he actually doesn't know how to read nor did he ever know how at any point.
- Parodied: Bob sees Chinese symbols in place of letters.
- Zig-Zagged: The show is inconsistent with whether Bob can read, or the trope is otherwise played with.
- Bob is initially said to be illiterate, but is revealed to be an amnesiac who forgot how to read. He's then seen reading a road sign and follows its instructions to visit the public toilet, but is later stated to have just looked at the picture and not the words "Public Toilet" on the sign.
- Averted: Words are never shown and we get no information about Bob's literacy.
- Enforced: "This is an educational show. We should make Bob a young child who is learning how to read to help kids learn how to read."
- Lampshaded: "Can't you read?"
- Invoked: Bob's parents don't teach him to read.
- Exploited: Alice writes whenever she doesn't want Bob to know what she's saying.
- Defied: Bob's parents don't teach him to read, so his preschool teacher does.
- Discussed: "Maybe he never learned how to read." "Don't be ridiculous. Of course I can read. All adults know how to read."
- Conversed: "That is so unrealistic. How can a grown man not know how to read?"
- Deconstructed: Because Bob can't read, he has pretty much no way to get legitimate employment and is forced to either become homeless or resort to crime to survive.
- Reconstructed: Doesn't mean he can't read pictures, though. Sure he can't read letters, but he can still read pictures, as long as there is little to no text.
- Implied: Bob seems to struggle with basic reading tasks, but the extent of his literacy isn't made clear.
Back to Never Learned to Read
