The Octopus Marooned by O’Henry Hilarious- 10 out of 10

 The Octopus Marooned by O’Henry


Hilarious- 10 out of 10

 

The author O’Henry is extremely funny.

And this is obvious as soon as you start reading one of his stories.

The humor may be dry at times, or dark but I find it fantastic-

Take this Octopus and the first lines:

-          "A trust is its weakest point," said Jeff Peters.

"That," said I, "sounds like one of those unintelligible remarks such
as, 'Why is a policeman?'"

"It is not," said Jeff. "There are no relations between a trust and a
policeman.”

And the continuation is much along the same lines

-          Trust is like an egg, and it is not like an egg”

At times, the humor is accidental and due to the way things change with the passing of time, which creates some absurd humor.

When O’Henry writes about a republican as candidate for the position of governor of Texas made me smile.

There can be no Democrat governor of Texas today and in fact Rick Perry, the former governor of the state is running for president

Again.

George Bush junior, before winning the highest political office available in the world has been governor of the same state.

And a Republican.

Though negative, a character can make you laugh

„Whenever he saw a dollar in another man's hands he took it as a
personal grudge, if he couldn't take it any other way.”

The main personages of this short story – Jeff and Andy travel to a little town in the Lone Star State, called Bird City.

As an irony, the small town suffers from flooding, which is what happens in Texas right now and is an unusual occurrence.

Andy has the idea of a swindle, whereby they bought all three saloons in the place where

„There was about 1,500 grown-up adults in Bird City that had arrived
at years of indiscretion; and the majority of 'em required from three
to twenty drinks a day to make life endurable”

And since every drink was one dollar- a huge sum at that moment- this was a fortune waiting to be taken.

'Jeff,' says he, 'I don't suppose that anywhere in the world you
could find three cormorants with brighter ideas about down-treading
the proletariat than the firm of Peters, Satan and Tucker,
incorporated. We have sure handed the small consumer a giant blow in
the sole apoplectic region. No?'

But then something happens that derails somewhat the initial project for

„There are two times when
you never can tell what is going to happen. One is when a man takes
his first drink; and the other is when a woman takes her latest.”

In an extraordinary twist of the plot, Andy has to talk when he is drunk and keeps a speech in front of a large audience.

All the people of Bird City go to listen to Andy, instead of buying one dollar drinks in the afternoon that has a totally unexpected and hilarious ending.

 

You can read this online at

http://www.literaturecollection.com/a/o_henry/49/

 

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