Foil

Character Role Analysis

X-Ray and Stanley

As the leader of D Tent, X-Ray may seem at first to be the very opposite of Stanley. Confident and pushy, he knows what he wants and he's not afraid to throw his weight around to get it. But over the course of the book, Stanley discovers that he, too, is a bit of a leader. After all, he'll go out on a limb to help a friend, and he ends up carrying this friend up a stinkin' mountain. In the end, X-Ray is a perfect foil for Stanley, who turns out to be a leader, too – just a much better kind.