Short Story Essay on "The Ransom of Red Cheif"

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Short Story Essay on "The Ransom of Red Chief" When two criminals kidnap a young boy, the outcome usually is not a very good one. “The Ransom of Red Chief”, by O. Henry (O. Henry Handout), ironically twisted in several ways, follows Bill and Sam, who kidnap Johnny Dorset, also known as Red chief. They capture the victim using a plan in order to receive a ransom of two-thousand dollars, and through several disastrous situations with the boy, they end up paying the father, Ebenezer Dorset to take him back. These characters, Bill and Sam, are acting as as the villains in this particular story at first. The story takes place down south, in Summit, Alabama. The theme is the Hostage taking over and ultimately making the villains into the victims. O. Henry uses several ironic qualities in various places throughout the story. The verbal irony makes the ironic mood clear to readers. For example, if somebody had just constructed a weapon, and someone else used that weapon to destroy its creator, then it would be verbal irony also. This is because the irony is extremely prominent in this story. In this case, the creator who constructed the weapon is Bill and Sam metaphorically. Red Chief is the one who uses that weapon to destroy these creators. This happens when initially, the plan is to kidnap a young boy and receive a ransom. When Red Chief eventually pushes the kidnappers to pay the father to take the boy back in the end, this describes when Red Chief uses that weapon to destroy Bill and Sam. In the short story, “The Ransom of Red Chief,” humor and irony is clearly immortalized directly, as O. Henry uses a scary, hard situation for a young boy to deal with and twisting it around making the kidnappers be the ones who deal with the hard situation. “In Summit, Alabama, flat as a flannel cake, was where the kidnappers chose their victim since it contained

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