...“The Ransom of Red chief” O’Henry (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910) The text under analysis is ‘The ransom of red chief’ written by O’Henry, one of the most famous American short story writers of 19th century. O. Henry’s real name was William Sydney Porter and he was born in Greensboro, North Carolina. Let me start from the summary. The story runs about two crooks - Bill Driscoll and Sam. They decided to pull off a "fraudulent town-lot scheme” but for this scheme they needed money. So, they decided to kidnap a little boy of the wealthy man of town of Summit. But they couldn’t imagine what was waiting for them. This story opens with PROLOGUE where the author introduces to us the beginning of the story. And in the prologue two characters are presented to us: the narrator Sam and his friend Bill Driscoll. This text is written in 1st person narration. O’Henry uses it to create the atmosphere of the situation itself and to give us the opportunity to be involved and to feel ourselves as participants. In the very beginning the author keeps us in suspense with the words: but wait till I tell you. The setting of the story is town of Summit in West Illinois. Further go RISING ACTIONS which include selection of the victim, hiding in the cave, games with the boy and writing a letter to the father of the boy Johnny. Here we meet other characters: a little boy of 10 years, who is described directly and his father, Ebenezer Dorset. But Ebenezer is opposed to Bill, Sam and Johnny as...
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...The plot of the story “The Ransom of Red Chief” by O.Henry I have to honestly admit that with all due respect to gifted writers who write voluminous novels, undoubtedly deserving respect for their well-weighed plot and images of heroes, perceptible and heart-piercing description etc., still with big respect I treat authors (surely talented) of short lambent stories. Furthermore, there is a need to “squeeze” almost everything in some pages, whereas novelists would require at least hundred pages. Thus, in my view one of the recognized masters of such genre is, undeniably, O.Henry. His impressive, common story “The Ransom of Red Chief” would make many people smile and think about life much easier. The story of two unlucky swindlers, Sam and Bill, who decided to make a pretty penny out of kidnapping, cannot leave someone untouched. Interesting and edifying story teaches us that there is no such thing as a free lunch, also that opportunities make thieves. Needing money, swindlers kidnap the boy, hoping to receive repayment in two thousand dollars (rather great sum for 1910s) from his wealthy father. Everything could have been easy, if the boy was “homebody”, however he was mischievous. The brigands made a serious mistake: they should have carefully chosen the captive. I think the plot of this story is to think properly before doing something and that everyone gets what he deserves. For instance, two hooligans suffered from their own conspiracy, instead of Dorset’s. In addition, at...
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...One thing someone could learn from this story is that you should never hold a small child hostage for money. In “The Ransom of the Red Chief” by O’Henry, Sam and Bill are in need of some money and decide to hold a ransom. They kidnap a little boy and find out that he is one of the most irritable people ever. One can infer from this story is that the people we originally thought to be antagonists might actually be the protagonists. In the beginning our main characters, Sam and Bill, are in need of money but can’t get any. That is when they decide it would be a good idea to kidnap a child and hold him for ransom. Here, the reader can see that they are going to be following the antagonists around. When they finally get Johnny to the cave...
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...Unit 5 Title: The Ransom of Red Chief[1] Suggested Time: 4 days (45 minutes per day) Common Core ELA Standards: RL.8.1, RL.8.2, RL.8.3, RL.8.4, RL.8.6, RL.8.7, RL.8.9; W.8.2, W.8.4, W.8.9; SL.8.1; L.8.1, L.8.2, L.8.5 Teacher Instructions Preparing for Teaching 1. Read the Big Ideas and Key Understandings and the Synopsis. Please do not read this to the students. This is a description for teachers about the big ideas and key understanding that students should take away after completing this task. Big Ideas and Key Understandings Writers use irony to fuel the plot of a story. Synopsis Bill and Sam decide that the best way to finance their upcoming land swindle is to kidnap the child of a wealthy citizen and hold him for ransom. The boy they choose, instead of being the docile, frightened child one would expect, is a terror who abuses Bill in every way he can think of, all in the name of fun. The response to their ransom note is not what they would have wished: instead of paying $1500 to get Johnny back, the father demands $250 to take the boy off their hands. In desperation, they agree, and end the story poorer than they began. Read the entire selection, keeping in mind the Big Ideas and Key Understandings. Re-read the text while noting the stopping points for the Text Dependent Questions and teaching Tier II/academic vocabulary. During Teaching 1. Students read the entire selection independently. 2. Teacher reads the text...
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...The ransom theory of the atonement was founded by theologian Origen of Alexandria. This theory was very dominant in the early Christian church and has also been called the "Classic" theory of the atonement. It is pulled from several scriptures in the Bible referring to Christ’s death on the cross as a ransom.According to this view, Satan established some sort of control over humanity when Adam and Eve sinned and held humanitycaptive. So, God had to literally “make a deal with the devil”in able to justly free them from Satan’s so called bondage. The deal was, according to the ransom theory, that God paid his Son Jesus Christ to Satan on the cross in order to win back those who were held captive by Satan. This is probably the craziest theory I have ever heard of but to Origen and other theologians and to those who followed them, it made complete sense. They had their own interpretations of Mark 10:45 which says, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” According to Origen this scripture reference referred to Christ’s death as a ransom paid to Satan. He believed that the sin of Adam and Eve caused God to abandon humankind to the Devil, who then exerted his power over humanity. When God decided to reconcile with us, he agreed to pay Satan a ransom for our freedom from Satan. The agreed-upon payment was Jesus' death on the cross. After the crucifixion, Satan kept his part of the bargain by releasing us from his power...
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...Shakespeare’s play Macbeth and Malouf’s novel Ransom both explore themes about freedom. The themes of freedom are largely characterised by their modes of textual representation – the play and the novel. Malouf’s novel is a heteroglossic text and is able to explore the themes relating to freedom through multiple focalisations and intertextuality with Homer’s Iliad. On the other hand, Shakespeare’s Macbeth explores the theme of freedom with asides, soliloquies and the supernatural. However, despite these differences in their representations of freedom there is a convergence for the reader in the implications for narrative meaning. Regardless of their contexts both texts elevate free will over predestination. Malouf’s novel Ransom reimagines...
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...The Ransom of Red Chief It is funny how things do not always work out the way we expect them to. No matter how long we plan or how impossible we think something may be, it can still happen. Bill and Sam thought they had an easy job and easy money right in front of them. O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief” represents irony as the desperation of two men, a kid’s hellish imagination get the best of them, and the bond between father and son are over estimated. Bill and Sam had only six hundred dollars between the both of them and they needed two thousand more to pull a scheme in Illinois. They had the bright idea to kidnap a kid and get the two thousand as a ransom. They wrote out the ransom note after having held the boy captive over night in a cave and they signed it “two desperate men.” Bill had been going out of his mind dealing with the boy’s wild imagination. He was about to break down and walk away without the money; he had enough. O. Henry: Red Chief was sitting on Bill’s chest, with one hand twined in Bill’s hair. In the other he had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing bacon; and he was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill’s scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the even before (281.) They were no longer desperate for the money but desperate to give the boy back. They lowered the ransom to only fifteen hundred because they realized no one would pay two thousand dollars for the return of “that forty-pound chunk of freckled...
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...Rendezvous The story ”Rendezvous” is written by Daniel Ransom in 1985, and throughout the story, the reader is brought through the different feelings of two young persons. Two persons with different views on life are trying to pursue different outcomes by acting in specifics ways. It is clear that the author is distinguishing between how to different persons cope with anger and desire to freedom. The story is split up in two. One part of the story is about a man called Payton and the other part of the story is about a girl called Kim. During the story no one says anything, and the story is told by a 3rd person unlimited narrator. The author only let the reader know about what they do and what they think and during the story we see that the narrator have the ability to switch between the characters. As we already know the story is written in 3rd person, which indicates that the story is written by the writer’s point of view. As mentioned, the story is split up in two parts and every time the story switch narrator it gets more exiting and the author has a tendency to increase the excitement, which keeps the story interesting. The author uses short sentences, and he often uses only one-word paragraphs, which is a tool used to keep raising the excitement of the story. Daniel Ransom is known for writing horror stories and thrillers, and it is clear that this story has a lot of inspiration from that genre. The title of the story “Rendezvous” means a meeting between two persons...
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...Bryce VanCamp 3rd hour Due: Monday, October 26 The Ransom of Red Chief In O. Henry’s story, The Ransom of Red Chief, there are several different characters, but the one I would like to tell you about is Red Chief (otherwise known as Johnny). Red Chief is a very naughty little boy. Red Chief brings excitement into the story, but he also causes chaos. In the text of The Ransom of Red Chief, the character Red Chief is in the street and he is throwing rocks at a kitten. Red Chief is a naughty little boy because the kitten isn’t even trying to harm Red Chief in any sort of way. Therefore, Red Chief is being naughty because people who aren’t naughty wouldn't throw rocks at kittens. In the film of The Ransom of Red Chief, the character Red Chief...
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...«The Ransom Of Red Chief» O.Henry. Analysis. O.Henry was a prolific American short story writer, a master of surprise endings, who wrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. William Sydney Porter was born in Greensboro, North Carolina. When he was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his paternal grandmother and aunt. At the age of fifteen he left school. In 1897 he was convicted of stealing money. In prison he started to write short stories to earn money to support his daughter Margaret. After three of the five years sentence he came out of the prison. In 1901 he changed his name to O. Henry and died of cirrhosis of the liver on June 5 1910 . It is shown by the authors way of writing that the genre of the Ransom Of The Red Chief is a non-fiction because the characters, places, the events and actions in the story seem almost real. O. Henry describes the characters in a very delicate manner. He shows that Red Chief is a very active and mischievous kid . He has made the life of his kidnappers hell. The author uses chronological order to tell the story and to state the events that took place. He starts by introducing the main characters , the setting , then makes his way through by adding some twists and turns. The story finishes with a touch of irony . -They kidnapped Johnny. -They sent a letter to the father with demands. -The father replies the letter by an offer. -They accept the offer. -They return Johnny and pay the father the...
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...French writer Anatole France once said, “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” In the poem “Janet Waking,” by John Crowe Ransom, he invites to experience the death of a beloved pet through the eyes of a young girl who does not understand the encounter and does not want to be informed. Janet is a young girl whose first waking thought is her pet hen, Chucky. In this poem, Janet wakes to find Chucky has died. She is immediately overcome with grief and devastation at this first encounter with death. Ransom, through the use of imagery and skillfully placed diction, conveys to the reader that exposure to death can mean a loss of immature security. Imagery is one of the devices Ransom uses to express his point...
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...Ransom on the High Seas: The case of Piracy in Somalia The pirates in the coast of Somalia came to activity at the start of 2003. The main reason that provoked local Somalis to start attacking foreign cargo ships was the civil war that broke out in 1991. The Somali Civil War leads to an unstable government that lacked on authority, leadership and control to stop the rising attacks between local groups. From there, Somalia went on downhill; its population decreased over two thirds from 1991 to 2011 and by 2008, the United Nations estimated that nearly 3.2 million Somalis were dependent on food aid for survival. These pirates had nothing to live fro before attacking the ships. They started hijacking the ships in look of money and valued good, however, by the first assaults they realized that the cargo in the ships was of no use for them and there wasn’t sufficient money for pirates to benefit from it. Leading them to start capturing the employers and asking for ransoms. They often worked implicitly with fundamentalist Islamic groups to provide additional on-shore security and protection for a fee. Somali’s pirates attack using small groups on speedboats that approach merchant vessel and launch hooks to climb aboard without being detected. Once on board they use small agile weapons such as AK-47’s assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades to capture the crew. Once they have taken full control of the cargo ship, they direct it near the coast from where they will conduct...
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...Harsh conditions, death, poverty, the overall unsentimental nature of life, and definition of an identity are all are subjects explored by writers Lucille Clifton and John Crowe Ransom in their writings. Although the two poets came from very different lives, the unique search for identity and meaning in life unites the two writer's poems in their expression of life. John Crowe Ransom a very distinguished gentleman born as the third child to a Methodist minister was raised in a very literate family. At age fifteen Ransom enrolled in Tennessee's esteemed Vanderbilt University where he later became a founding member of the group of writers known as the fugitives. Favoring poetic modernism in the early 1900's, The fugitives focus was on philosophy, american pragmatisim and the loss of a "southern identity and culture" due to the industrialization of the time period. After graduating from Vanderbilt in 1909 Ransom went on to become an English teacher, Rhodes Scholar and later the headof the english department at Vnderbilt. Allthe while Ransom gained notoriety with scholars for his candid and unique way of examining emotional situations with little eotional pull or bias. With rootsin psychology, Ransom's poetry examines the ironic and unsentimental nature of life. Much like Ransom, poet Lucille Clifton often explored the rigityof the world, however Clifton's insight and ability to write about such rigity come from her impoverished and unprivilaged upbringing. Born in 1936 to father...
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..."Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking" (1899). He used a pseudonym, Olivier Henry, only once and changed his pen name to O. Henry, not wanting his readers to know he was in jail. He published 12 stories while in prison. After serving 3 years of the five-year sentence, he was released for good behavior. He moved to New York City in 1902 and wrote a story a week for the New York World, and also for other publishers. His first collection of stories was "Cabbages and Kings" (1904). The next collection, "The Four Million" (1906), included his well-known stories "The Gift of the Magi", "The Skylight Room" and "The Green Door". One of his last stories, "The Ransom of Red Chief" (1910), is perhaps the best known of his works. Among its film adaptations are Ruthless People (1986) with Danny DeVito and Bette Midler, The Ransom of Red Chief(1998), The Ransom of Red Chief...
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...“Irony on Red Chief” The irony in the “The Ransom of Red Chief “creates humor and develops a theme by helping the readers understand what it happening between Bill and Sam. The type of irony this story has is a Dramatic Irony. It has a Dramatic Irony because the audience is aware of something the characters in the story are not. The story “The Ransom of Red Chief” uses humor to develop a theme. I think that the humor is between Bill and Red Chief. In paragraph 23 it states,” Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill”. To me this is funny because you could never think a child could hurt a grown man intentionally. In paragraph 24 it states,” I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill’s...
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