What would you do if everything that you did in your life came out just like you wanted it to? However, life does not work like that due to something called irony. O. Henry's short story “The Ransom of Red Chief” is a high level of comedy that uses irony and allusions to convey the idea that sometimes things don't come out like we expect them to.
When someone mentions a kidnapping, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Something scary, a nerve wracking experience… A fun time playing games and camping out in the wild? O. Henry describes a story about two older men in need for money that kidnap the son of one of the richest men from around in return for two thousand dollars. However, this kidnapping is nothing what they expected it to be. “The kid was a freckle-face boy of ten, with bright red hair, and Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of the thousand dollars in a flash.” When they kidnap the boy, he does not want to go home because “[he does not] have any fun
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Bill clearly dislikes the boy and claims that he is driving him insane. “One more night with this kid will sned me to a bed in Bedlam.” Bedlam is one of the first mental facilities in London, it is also a very famous mental hospital in history. It makes sense why the author would add such clever allusion describing how Bill feels as if he is going insane. Another allusion would be when Red Chief throws “a rock the size of an egg [that] had caught Bill just behind his left ear.” The allusion comes from a biblical passage in which David, a young child ends up defeating a much bigger and older man, Goliath, by whirling a sling above his head. Just like it is described in The Ransom of Red Chief, “[j]ust then we heard a kind of war-whoop, such as David might have emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had pulled out of his pocked, and he was whirling it around his
What is irony? The dictionary definition of irony is a difference in what is expected and what happens. The situational irony in the Ransom of Red Chief creates humor and develops a theme by Red Chief's father being paid to take his own son back. The irony in the story is entertaining by developing an unexpected ending. In the ending, the kidnappers, Sam and Bill, pay the father to take his son back.
In the story of The Ransom of Red Chief the story and movie were very different. However they had some similarities. Some of which include them kidnapping Red Chief. In both stories this was the main point, so therefore these two were alike in the story and movie. Once they reached the caves Red Chief and Bill played a couple of games while they were there.
Imagine someone spends their entire life working hard towards becoming a divorce lawyer and then they suddenly are facing the same problem they are meant to help find a solution for, divorce. This is an example of an ironic situation. Irony is used in many different forms of literature and by many different authors and writers to highlight and focus on important aspects of their work. Ironic situations provide more information to the reader and allow revelations to be made within the story. For instance, an author who uses this literary technique is Richard Connell in one of his most well-known short stories, “The Most Dangerous Game”.
In “The Ransom of Red Chief,” both situational and verbal irony is used many times through the story to create a humorous tone. Verbal irony is used in “The Ransom of Red Chief” when Bill says to Sam “I was rode, the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand ain’t a palatable substitute. ”(The Ransom of Red Cheif pg. 77) Bill is telling Sam how awful Red chief is to him and creates a humorous tone by using verbal irony.
The plan was to keep the boy for ransom and have the family pay for his return,
In the story “The Ransom Of Redchief” the two main characters Bill and Sam decide to kidnap a kid so they can get money from the ransom. The choose Johnny (also known as Red Chief) to capture. Johnny is a very bad choice for a kidnapping for many reasons. Not only is Johnny very energetic and playful but he's also violent when he plays games, but most importantly his dad who would pay the ransom doesn't care enough to pay it. As already mentioned Johnny is extremely energetic and imaginative.
Usually when when someone gets kidnapped they are crying for their mother. John thought this was the best day of his life! Another reason of situational irony is that the two men end up paying mr Dorset, John's dad, for him to take john back. Bill and Sam recive a letter from Mr
They would be sneaky and smart, considering to be fearless and not afraid. However, the kidnappers do not behave as the reader would expect, instead they are stupid and actually kind to the kid. They want to get rid of him because they are scared of him. They make it all into a game since they are being nice to him.
Christian or not, it is universally horrible to kidnap a person. Kidnapping is literally stealing a child from a family to get some demand. In Sam’s case, he is kidnapping for
The narrator is just asking to get into trouble, first stealing a stuffed parrot to be seen and heard, then stealing a car and kidnapping a baby, signifying purity and innocence, and then leaving it on its own. But when he finally gets caught, he doesn't understand his actions. Through struggle and conflict the narrator went through many emotions on his quest for love. Feeling and expressing ownership over the baby when he knows it is not capable of surviving on its own, something that is contradictory to his normal behavior. “I am not all that afraid.
The movie and the story “The ransom of Red Chief” is alike in many ways. It is also different. In the storybook and the movie the kidnappers need 2,000 dollars. So they set off to find Johnny. Also in the movie and story the kidnappers’ names were Bill and Sam.
The story and the movie “The Ransom of Red Chief” have a bunch of differences. In the movie, Sam tells a random kid to send a letter to Mr. Dorset. But in the story, Sam took the letter to the post office and a mail man took it to Mr. Dorset. Another difference is that in the story, the kidnappers offered Johnny Dorset some candy and kidnapped him. But in the movie, the kidnappers didn’t offer him candy and just put him in a trunk.
Have you ever been kidnapped? Almost all of you would probably say no. But sometimes it would be interesting just to think about what you would do. In the novel “Kidnapped” by Robert Louis Stevenson, An 18 year old teenager named David Balfour is on a quest to recieve his father’s inheritance. However, his greedy uncle bribes a ship captain to take David on a ship, knock him out, and send him to sea.
The males that participated in abduction perceived abduction as being a manner in which they could escape their financial difficulties and evade their social oblivion. It was a method in which men could secure control of real estate, finances and social status. The characteristics and features of
How would you feel if you were taken by two strange men,would you be scared,worried,sad, maybe even happy,well this kid had an emotion that you probably didn't expect. In the story The Ransom of the Red Chief the author illustrates the theme, If a person is determined to do something they could be blind to the things around them that could change how they feel about someone of something. In the story the two men think that since they have the boy they will get the ransom from the boy's father and get away with it “We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return,”The two men expect the father to listen to their request but the plan ends up backfiring on them and they end up with a different offer for the kids return because they don't want him anymore and they want to get rid of him. They also think that