Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Essay on ransom of red chief
Essay on ransom of red chief
Essay on ransom of red chief
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
You never know what two desperate men would do to get some money… even if it means kidnapping a psychotic ten-year-old who’s looking for a good time. When Sam and Bill, two ‘criminals’, kidnap young Johnny Dorset for ransom money, they are met with the most unexpected scenario and end up paying for this kid to leave them. “The Ransom of Red Chief” by O. Henry is a hilarious high level tall tale that uses ironic situations and clever hyperboles to show that sometimes your original ideas don’t always go according to plan. Irony is a highly used element in any comedy. So, O. Henry uses this to his advantage by surprising the reader with his unexpected plot twists and turns. For example, the kidnappers are afraid of the kid instead of the other …show more content…
They can be quite witty and funny whenever used in the right scenarios, and O. Henry uses them perfectly in his context. Sam had just be awoken by, “a series of awful screams” from Bill, who was being “attacked” by Johnny. Johnny was just trying to give Bill his punishment, which he deemed the night before as ‘to be scalped’, hince why the boy was trying to rip Bill’s hair off in the middle of the night. “I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again, but, from that moment, Bill’s spirit was broken.” (Henry 4) Spirits can’t literally be broken, so it’s clearly an exaggerated phrase. But, it’s used in such a clever way that it makes the audience giggle. Another smart use of hyperboles is shown in (Henry 6), when Sam caught a misbehaving Johnny after he had thrown a rock at Bill. “I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled.” Well, obviously freckles can’t rattle… It’s showing that he shook that boy quite violently, and it give the audience quite an amusing mental picture if they actually tried to imagine that particular scenario. Bill giving up and losing his spirit wasn’t apart of the original idea, neither was having to physically shake the boy to behave either... But sometimes things happen without reason, right? Sam and Bill seem to be going through a lot of unwanted changes while they try to stick to their primary plan. But even then, it shows that you can't just expect everything go run smoothly. Sometimes things don't always go as expected, but even then you have to make the most out of what you're given… Or you can make an extremely clever and amusing comedy with the same scenarios, just like O. Henry did in “A Randoms for Read Chief.” He used hilarious irony with cleverly placed hyperboles to create a high-level comedy within his audience. His message, throughout the passage, is that sometimes your beginning ideas don't always go according to
For example, in the beginning of the story, the narrator starts by talking about Mrs. Freeman. “Besides the neutral expressions that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings” (433). The irony in this first line is that she is a “Freeman,” yet only has three different expressions. Another example of an irony that is easily noticeable is when Mrs. Hopewell considered Manley Pointer as “good country people.” “He was just good country people, you know” (441). The irony in this line is that in the end, Manley Pointer, whom is supposedly is “good country people,” ends up being a thief who steals Hulga’s prosthetic leg and runs and not only steals, but admits that he is not a Christian, making the line, “good country people,” a dramatic irony. However, one of the most ironic characters in the story is Hulga herself as she understands little of herself, regardless of the high education she holds in philosophy. For example, Hulga imagines that Pointer is easily seduced. “During the night she had imagined that she seduced him” (442). Yet, when they kissed, she was the one who was seduced and having the “extra surge of adrenaline… that enables one to carry a packed trunk out of a burning house…”
As the irony continues this allows the reader to develop feelings and opinions towards the characters. No matter if one may have
Situational irony is used in both O’Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief” and “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant but the effect of the techniques on the tone of each story is very different. In O’Henry’s story, the protagonist, Red Chief, is being kidnapped by two criminals, Bill and Sam. There are many ironic events that occur in the story. For example, the reader expects Red Chief to want to go back home to his family but instead, he is having the time of his life. As hard as Bill tries, he cannot even send him home. Bill utters to Sam, “‘I showed him the road to Summit and kicked him about eight feet nearer there at one kick’” (6). This is comical because it is using a literary technique known as slapstick comedy. The reader can imagine Bill swinging his leg and kicking Red Chief all the way back to Summit. Another example of situational irony in the story is that the reader would expect that Red Chief to be scared but what is actually happening is that Bill is terrified. While speaking with Sam, Bill complains about Red chief yet again, “‘I’ve stood by you without batting an eye ...
“It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you,”(Henry, pg.1) about this comedic story that identifies two moronic characters and one holy terror of a child, who they thought they could handle. O. Henry’s short story “The Ransom of Red Chief” is a high level of comedy that uses allusion and irony to convey the idea that you must be wise before pursuing an act, because it may come back to bite you.
“Fear me,love me,do as I say,I’ll be your slave” says Jareth The Goblin King from the Labyrinth. By using irony, the author of a story can create a surprising events. Authors use multiple kinds of irony to make stories more surprising.
Mark Twain, an American author of the 1800s, narrates the adventures of Huckleberry Finn in his novel The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn. Twain’s purpose is to expose the greedy nature of humanity and what effect it has to the society and the people. Twain highlights the lengths that people are willing to go through to benefit or gain for themselves through the satirical strategies of humour, irony, and derision. The author has adopted a humorous yet serious tone in order to compel the yearning for the refuge from the constraint environment of greed of the post-Civil War American easterners.
In the short story, "Guests of the Nation," Frank O'Connor uses irony to illustrate the conflict which men face when their roles as combatants force them to disregard the humanity of their enemies. In both life and literature, irony exists when there is a contrast between expectation and reality. Verbal irony is defined as "a figure of speech in which the actual intent is expressed in words which carry the opposite meaning" (Thrall 248). In dramatic irony there is a contrast between a character's perception of a situation and the actual facts. Often "some of the actors on the stage or some of the characters in a story are 'blind' to facts known to the spectator or reader" (155) . The short story "Guests of the Nation" by Frank O'Connor illustrates both types of irony.
In both A Streetcar Named Desire and Hamlet, Tennessee Williams and William Shakespeare, respectively, demonstrate their abilities to create engaging plays which work on several levels in order to produce the desired effect. One of the most important characteristics of these plays is the playwrights' success in using their words to create the worlds surrounding their works. Both Shakespeare and Williams effectively use irony in the aforementioned plays, both in the plot and with specific symbolism, to create mildly existential environments where effective irony is a confirmation of fate and justice. Immediately apparent to the reader upon completion of these two works is the glaring appearance of irony in the plays' plots. For example, in A Streetcar Named Desire, a great deal of dramatic irony is created when the audience is made aware of details that characters are ignorant to.
It is common knowledge that a book is always better than its movie version. This is especially true with the short story, “The Ransom of Red Chief” by O. Henry. He writes this story in an enjoyable way, with realistic events, an understandable plot and, overall it is more organized compared to its movie version. O. Henry’s story involves a young boy who gets kidnapped in Summit, Alabama by two con men, who are looking for some cash. The two con men, knowing that this boy is the son of a wealthy man, decide to kidnap and hold him for two thousand dollars ransom. After spending a few days with the boy, they come to regret their decision, because the boy is annoying, impudent and violent. They lower the ransom to fifteen hundred dollars, hoping
Webster's online dictionary defines humor as "a quality that appeals to a sense of the ludicrous (laughable and/or ridiculous) or incongruous." Incongruity is the very essence of irony. More specifically, irony is "incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the expected result." Flannery O'Connor's works are masterpieces in the art of literary irony, the laughable and ridiculous. The incongruous situations, ridiculous characters, and feelings of superiority that O'Connor creates make up her shocking and extremely effective, if not disturbing, humor. I say "disturbing" because O'Connor's humor, along with humor in general, most often contains the tragic. O'Connor has been quoted as saying, "The comic and the terrible [...] may be opposite sides of the same coin" (Farley 17). Throughout her works, specifically "Good Country People," O'Connor uses her humor to humble and expose the biases of the overly intellectual and spiritually bankrupt.
There are three different types of irony. There is dramatic irony, which is where the reader knows more the character actually does. For example horror films, when you the scary monster is under the bed but the character does not know. Verbal irony, which is when you say something and actions show otherwise. For example relationships, when your husband tells you he loves you and then has an affair with another women. Situational irony, which is where expecting something to happen in a certain situation and it, ends up being the complete opposite of what you thought would have happened. For examples cops, when cops get tickets for getting pulled over for speeding. Irony is a huge part of story telling. It’s the suspense that irony
One example of dramatic irony is when Oedipus is looking for the killer of the king Laius-his father. The irony here is that he is looking for himself because he is the murder of his father. Oedipus knows that he killed someone, but what he does not know is that it was Laius, the one he murder. Oedipus wants to punish the person who killed Laius, but we, the audience know that Oedipus was the one who killed Laius. Also Oedipus married Jocasta without knowing that she is his mother. We, the audience knew that he was Jocasta's son, but he was unaware of that.
The irony at the end of this story is very interesting. O’ Connor forces the reader to wonder which characters are “Good Men”, perhaps by the end of the story she is trying to convey two points: first, that a discerning “Good Man” can be very difficult, second that a manipulative, self centered, and hollow character: The Grandmother is a devastating way to be, both for a person individually and for everyone else around them. The reader is at least left wondering if some or all of the clues to irony I provided apply in some way to the outcome of this story.
Ever since literature has existed, there has been some arrays of mockery. Whether it be a criticism about a person, an action, or the way people live, there has especially been satire. In the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, encounters plenty of people and situations that are easy targets to ridicule. Throughout the text, Mark Twain satirizes religious views, hypocrisy, and romantic ideals to expose the real human flaws in southern society.
The act of kidnapping is a very dark subject, usually the child is molested/killed, but in “The Ransom of Red Chief” O’Henry finds a way to transform the topic into comedy. Most kidnapped children would sit in the corner and cry, whereas Red Chief takes control of the situation and treats it like a game, playing the war chief who had captured “Old Hank” and attempts to scalp him the next day, for which most kidnappers would kill the child at that point, but Bill and Sam (the kidnappers of Red chief) just don’t have it in them to kill a 10 year old, regardless of the Red Chief’s personality, and the situation is reversed around them. Although these are two hardened criminals, who in most situations would kill/dismember the child, Red Chief takes control of the situation and in a way, they become the kidnapped because of the lack of awareness of the challenge of the ransom.