Ransom of Red Chief by O'Henry ~ April 15

[BooksAdmin]

The Ransom of Red Chief by O'Henry (1862-1910) Two hoboes strike on a get-rich quick scheme to kidnap an overly-energetic 9 year old. Web-Book The Ransom of Red Chief William Sydney Porter O. Henry - pseudonym of William Sydney Porter

LINK TO: HUMOR, WIT, & SATIRE DISCUSSION

Questions to Consider

• How many reversals can you find in this story?
• What was Bill's greatest internal conflict?
• How does this Biblical proverb "He who sets a snare shall fall into it." express the theme of the story?
• What are the conflicts for the kidnappers?
• What about Sam and Bill makes this story all the more humorous?
• Could this story be told in the same way today?

Discussion Leader: BarbStAubrey

[BarbStAubrey]

How many of  you remember this story from you school years. I think it may have been in 7th or 9th grade we read this - it was a hoot then and a still a hoot - then it reminded me of my  younger brother and now it reminds me of my grandboys a few years ago.

We start to discuss this short story on Wednesday April 15 - by making the discussion available for everyone to read we can easily link to The Ransom of Red Chief in the heading and have a quick laugh to start our day.

I smile thinking on how many innocents ended up becoming the bane of my existence as they acted out what was so natural to them... I bet y'all have like stories of sweet faced innocents causing havoc in your lives.

Pull up a chair on Wednesday and share in the fun with us...

[mrssherlock]

 

[BarbStAubrey]

It is a fun one isn't it Jackie - nothing like seeing a  youngster run rings around an adult that is trying to pull a scam. Poor Bill he is outmatched.

[ALF43]

GRRRRR  I was attempting to make a point about the town being "as flat as a flannel cake" and I lost my whole post.

 A flannel cake looks like a pancake to me, but I've never heard it called this.  When I first read it, I thought it read FUNNEL cake.
Anyway,  I cracked up because the name of the town is SUMMIT.   Now that's funny, a town as flat as a pancake, called Summit.  OK then-  there must be a crowning point or apex in a townlike this, right? 
Certainly the peasantry was not elevated or eminent.  Doesn't this sentence open up an entire thought for the whole short story, even before we consider the plot?

The narrator of this short story describes a mysterious plot indeed. Bill afterward exressed the kidnapping idea as a moment or temporary mental apparition, (which they didn't find out about until later.)   
Isn't an apparition an illusion, something ghostly?  This man(O.Henry) brilliantly sucks us right into this vortex doesn't he?
 All throughout this read I felt a compulsion to smile, shake my head in amazement at these 2 fools and wonder, puzzled, what were you thinking- a 9 year old?

[BarbStAubrey]

here we go a site that explains regional English and where the word flannel cake is used rather than pancake. http://www.pbs.org/speak/words/trackthatword/ttw/?i=1207

I hadn't noticed the flat as a pancake town called Summet - went right by me since I didn't think summet as height - but that is it isn't it - the whole story is about assumptions that go array.

[ALF43]

Can you even imagine two guys, such as these, coming up with the word "philoprogenitiveness?"  I love the name O. Henry gives to the prominent and stern  financier- Scrooge!  er, sorry  I mean Ebenezer.
That would be reversal # 1 and #2 would be when the kid chucked a piece of brick at Bill when approached.  I mean, hello Bill, the kid was aiming for the cat initally.  Did these guys expect a meek little honey of a boy?  He took right over, enjoying the "camp out" and terrori :ozing the men.

[BarbStAubrey]

All of a sudden I realized - when first published this may have been funny on a different level - at the time in  history men had very little to do with child rearing - could be why the boy was running wild as they used to say when there was no female influence - at any rate Bill and Sam have no idea about what a boy will do and that may be what added to the fun for the reader because it was that knowing nod of the head when it was acknowledged men couldn't run a household or raise a child. And so this story just proved the idea that guys had no knowledge of what to do with a young boy full of beans.

I am remembering even my own experience back in the early 70s when I was not so sure that women should be sharing the duties of home and family in order to get out and work - it felt like being asked to take early retirement because there still was the belief that what Moms did included a whole range of concerns and activities that made family homelife that would not be taken up and put on the agenda of a man.

These days I do see Dad's taking their children to the Doctor and other activities that were traditionally part of a woman's role - but the way of caring for children has changed so that home remedies are not used which involved someone being at home for a few days till the child's health was back - that is just one example of how I think the audience reading this would have not even assumed that the guys knew what they were doing when they took on the likes of a 9 year old boy. Today, we think they should have known better which gives this story new legs as we can laugh at the situation as if Bill and Sam were like part of the three stooges.

I know here I am being serious - not laughing along with the fun of it - but the changes is social entanglements is always eye opening for me when the history is not that long ago and yet, because we have changed it is a different world.

[ALF43]

Barb- Have things really changed that much over the years and through the ages?  What 9 year old boy wouldn't push an adult's buttons knowing that he could get away with such shenanigans?  What 9 yr. old boy wouldn't know enough to dupe these two oafs?
The kid is playing them like a fiddle and having a grand time of it himself, keeping them up at night and playing all day. 

 I love it- the Three stooges .

Barb, where is everyone?  ARe they looking for pale face somewhere in the canyon?

[BarbStAubrey]

 You said it - and love it -  yep, playing them like a fiddle -

I do not know where folks are - the weather warming up they may be preparing their gardens - I do not know - I've left reminders and Pat has included this in the Book Bytes - I think it is a cute story but maybe it is not to the liking of most folks. We shall see what we shall see - this may not have been an idea for the times -

Another thought - remember that movie about two out of work Dads who start a childcare business. I never saw the movie but seems to me Eddie Murphy was one of the main characters and was it the same or another movie that had a similar storyline with Arnold Schwarzenegger [spell] seems to me both were stories that had to do with kids putting one over on the adults - they say nothing new and so you have to wonder if the idea of the movie was this story taken into a today situation.

[Babi]

I think the name of 'Summit', a town as flat as a flannel cake, does set the tone for the story.  Irony, with more than a touch of slapstick. Our villains are definitely dim bulbs, whereas the kid is quick, sharp, ...and more than a tad spoiled, I suspect.

 

[ALF43]

In my dad's vernacular the "kid needs a whooping."  

It makes you take issue with parents doesn't it?  Was this a child who the parents indulged and mollycoddled or was this a kid who wasdisregarded because of his rudeness?  Either way- let's face it the kid knew how to "work the adults" didn't he?
 
He's obnoxious, screeching, screaming and even threatening poor ole Bill with a good old fashioned scalping.
The irony of that one Babi is when our narrator relates it's " an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak."

INCONTINENTLY!   hhahahaha I cracked up over that statement.

[BarbStAubrey]

Words and phrases that made me chuckle to down right roar out loud – yes, I agree with you Alf that was so right on – on older fat man – of course incontinently – perfect and how he slid it in there – if I didn’t know better I would think this was written by Mark Twain – I did not remember O’Henry so full of the comic turn of phrase.

Other phrases and words that had me laughing.


Temporary mental apparition'

undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole

Philoprogenitiveness

lackadaisical bloodhounds

a diatribe or two

a welter-weight cinnamon bear

a during-dinner speech

Does the trees moving make the wind blow?... Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I don't like girls. You dassent catch toads unless with a string.

jumping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: 'Hist! pard,'

dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair.

expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnappers….one man ploughing with a dun mule…There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view.

'He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back,' explained Bill, 'and then mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam?'

a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off.

shook him until his freckles rattled.

it ain't human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat.

masculine proclivities and habits of self-defence,

when all systems of egotism and predominance fail.

articles of depredation;

Sand ain't a palatable substitute

'In ten minutes I shall cross the Central, Southern and Middle Western States, and be legging it trippingly for the Canadian border.

[Babi]

ALF, I did hope fervently that it was the screaming that was incontient. 

Oh, I totally missed the 'during-dinner speech'!  Thanks so much, BARB. That episode, tho', of dropping the hot baked potato down the mans back and smashing it, that wasn't funny, really. I really had to wonder if there wasn't a streak of cruelty in this kid. Perhaps shaking him 'until his freckles rattled' might not be a bad idea. 
 I confess I hadn't really appreciated O'Henry's way with words until I went back
and re-read this short story. I'm very glad it was picked for this discussion.

[BarbStAubrey]

hehehe Probably as cruel as the reality of kidnapping - all three in this story are criminals under the skin - who would have thought an author had a way of enlisting our sympathies for a couple of criminals committing serious crime by making them into no account bumbling fools by a young reprobate who under another code of community conduct and with different parents who had no power would be risking foster care on grounds the parents could not control him.

We have gotten so far from accepting this kind of childhood behavior.  I am thinking back to when it was normal to play cowboys and Indians with bow and arrows, using mud or mothers makeup as face paint and tying babysitters to a tree or a chair. When was the last time any of  us even saw a package of bows and arrows for kids - today it is considered dangerous and removed not only from production but the concept was made to be so aggressive that parents no longer fashion bows and arrows in their garages for their children to play with.

At one time it was the wild kids who used all their facilities and ended up as young adults becoming creative risk takers when few in this nation had advanced education to guide risk taking. When you look at those old movie comics with today's values most of their antics seem cruel and yet, they were the butt of such laughter back then. We  laugh at what strikes a chord of familiarity and so I think life was just harder and folks expected a story to reflect their life.

You have to wonder if this story goes a ways towards ridiculing criminal acts so that folks rather than living in fear  can see even a kid full of beans can stop criminals in their tracks. The father reversing the payout reminds me of that WWII story where when a message was received from the Germans to surrender because the area was surrounded - the response was one word "Nuts" - the same sort of bravado we see here in this story by both the kid and his Dad.

[ALF43]

That's the thing about this story, you just read right along, smile and shake your head at all 3 hooligans as if this type of behavior is expected.  Like Barb said, it's almost "Twain" like in reading. 
Can't you just see the little bugger whirling a sling shot at poor Bill?
Bill readily admits he had followed Sam through thick and thin without batting an eye but this kid has put the fear of God into him.

 Can you imagine either one of these bumpkins saying "I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes.....  ahahah

I agree Babi a hot, smashed potato is NOT funny and I'd have kicked his little butt.

What did you think about the letter to Ebenezer demanding the $1500?  It was quite specific wasn't it?  I remember reading this in Jr. High, I think it was,  and just jumping up and down in my seat anticipating what the answer would cotain.  Even as a kid, I knew it wouldn't end as they had conspired.

[Babi]

It was normal to tie a baby-sitter to a chair?!!  Mercy, BARB, where did you grow up? Cowboys and Indians, definitely!  The Saturday kids' matinee nearly always featured a Western, paired with a comedy or perhaps Tarzan. Was there a kid who didn't try to yell like Tarzan? But the hot potato incident was definitely hurtful. It's not as though the kid was afraid of those two bumblers. That act put the shenanigans 'beyond the pale', in my view.

I agree, ALF.  There are a number of times when the kidnappers use words
wholly out of sync' with their apparent intelligence level.

[BarbStAubrey]

Yep, and the baby sitters would laugh along and instruct the kids how to tie a knot that would hold and how to tie hands first - it was all part of the fun and everyone involved was playing make believe.

The hot potato bit was harsh but then so is kidnapping - I am thinking of the Lindburgh Baby - O'Henry having lived in Austin was probably familiar with the Cynthia Ann Parker story. So the concept that O'Henry is using I think is to take things to an exaggeration. The boy has to be made to seem worse than Bill and Sam although, in the scheme of the law they were clearly the criminals who deserved everything they got.

I guess I was not reading this as if it really happened but that it is a story and it is all working to create the illusion that this kid could best two grown men and, as if in on the joke, the father cooberates with his son by threatening him on them. I guess I see this story as a big joke almost like the long tales that the Irish were famous for telling that had a  punch line that made the anti hero look good.

If this story continued - I could see the Dad very proudly walking into town bragging how his son outsmarted the kidnappers and in the meantime the kid is either using a pea shooter at the ladies hats or nipping a piece of candy from the jar when the store clerk is not looking. Since the Dad is mayor everyone shakes their heads but puts up with the kid who later in life goes on to The Citadel or at minimum, Alabama Military Academy [AMA] and comes back a sterling community leader.

Sam and Bill drift west and end up working on the U Up U Down Ranch in the Davis Mountains and then sneak down to join the citizen army that went after Pancho Villa. They got lost in Mexico and stayed there till they died.

OK back tu the story - I was also thinking Bill is either not very old or in pretty good shape to be climbing a tree as a lookout post. And I wonder how many pounds Sam lost acting as the horse.

[ALF43]

That's good Barb!  I love it and never considered THE END!

If this story continued - I could see the Dad very proudly walking into town bragging how his son outsmarted the kidnappers and in the meantime the kid is either using a pea shooter at the ladies hats or nipping a piece of candy from the jar when the store clerk is not looking. Since the Dad is mayor everyone shakes their heads but puts up with the kid who later in life goes on to The Citadel or at minimum, Alabama Military Academy [AMA] and comes back a sterling community leader.

[Babi]

Point taken, BARB. Genuine kidnappers deserve anything that happens to them. I cannot figure out why on earth the kidnappers would pay the father to take the kid back, though. Even the dumbest thief would simply put the kid out of the car and drive away.

[BarbStAubrey]

Your suggesting a car makes me wonder what time in history this story was written - need to look it up - as I recall O'Henry died around 1910 - I believe the Model T was in production by then.

[BarbStAubrey]

OK found the dates - The Ransom of Red Chief was first Published: 1907 - The 'Merry Oldsmobile" was manufactured starting 1902 and Ford with his assembly line production producing one vehicle every 15 minuets started in 1914.

This story taking place in a small town Alabama. Even though the Mayor was one of the wealthier folks in town it is doubtful he had an Olds and even if he had one the kidnappers sure would not have had a vehicle. There would have been dusty streets with no curbs and so walking was probably the means of transportation. The only horse mentioned was Sam in order to satisfy Red Chief.

Whew wrap our heads around that and the story has a different character doesn't it.

[Babi]

Oops!  You're so right.  No car. Still, there was no need to go up to the door and beg the Mayor to take his son back, much less pay him to do so.  Leave 'Red Chief' at the edge of town and hightail it out of there! 
  Ah, mustn't be picky.  Exaggeration plays a large part in humor. Look at pratfalls and caricatures.   

[BarbStAubrey]

Babi I have become more and more curious about what an auto would look like in 1907 - I had found and cannot find it now the whole history of the first vehicle that Olds built in numbers - something about a fire and all the other  experimental cars were lost in the fire except this one that they built over 2,000 the first year and then 3,500 the next and then 4,000 the next year. And so if they produced at least 4,000 a  year till 1907 t here would have been 21,500 Old on the road.

I do remember singing as a child "My Merry Oldsmobile."

Here is a picture of the model as it looked between 1902 and 1907
http://www.dyna.co.za/cars/Oldsmobile_05.jpg

Then I found this site and I was blown away by the phenomenal change in the look of the Olds between 1907 and 1927 and then again in 1937 - that is only 10 years difference between these accomplishments - I am thinking of the creativity and engineering - amazing! Except for the 1950s  cars with the exaggerated tails the cars have not changed as dramatically as they did between 1907 and 1927.

http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/main.php?g2_itemId=60296

[Babi]

 Those first cars were a marvel, even though those thin wheels look like they would shake badly, and of course everyone complained about the noise and the smell of gasoline.  I didn't pay much attention to cars as a kid, so those lo-o-ong front ends on the Olds surprise me.  The amazing changes these days are in the electronics....cars that talk to you, plot your route for you, and notify someone if you're in an accident. Oh, brave new world!