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Subliminal Messages Depicted In Just Lather That's All

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Would you put yourself in a life threatening situation just to taunt someone? You probably wouldn’t, but Captain Torres would. This is what happened in “Just Lather, That’s all,” and the Captain got to do exactly what he aimed for. This story uses many different methods to give subliminal messages about the setting to the reader, keeping the reader interested and alert. By analyzing this piece and the techniques that the writer uses, we can tell that when Captain Torres walked into the barber shop and sat in the chair, he knew the barber would want to kill him. However, he was still completely confident that the barber wouldn’t have the guts to kill, and he took this opportunity to taunt the barber.

The writer of this piece uses several methods in writing this to make the reader think about the piece and what the characters are thinking. First of all, he doesn’t tell us anything about the setting. For example, he starts off the piece by saying this: “He said nothing when he entered. I was passing the best of my razors back and forth on a …show more content…

Here is a bit of dialogue that supports this: “’The town must have learned a lesson from what we did,’ he said. ‘Yes,’ I replied, securing the knot at the base of his dark, sweaty neck. ‘That was a fine show, eh?’ ‘Very good,’ I answered, turning back for the brush.’” I think that this quote was showing that as a barber, he had to understand and comply with whatever the captain said. The captain was killing rebels, so the lowly barber had to be interested in whatever he said to avoid suspicion, no matter how much it angered him. This passage showed how the captain displayed complete dominance over the barber and put him in his place. Even though there was a drastic shift in physical power, the captain was completely convinced that he was safe because the barber was so much socially lower than

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