A Game Of Bridge Short Story

656 Words3 Pages
Theme: the story reflects the innate greed in man that dominates over one’s desire to be good or generous. It is a study of the human psyche that succumbs to one’s frailties (weaknesses). Points to remember: 1. The writer brings in a friend to explain the theme given above. 2. The friend becomes the narrator, telling the writer (and us) about an incident which led him to deliberate on being generous and then succumb to miserliness. 3. The writer therefore distances himself, claiming that he just listened to the narrator. The ‘friend’-cum-narrator: He is the protagonist – through his story he compels us to take note of the fact that we hold discussions with our inner selves spurred by a noble thought, but ultimately act to please ourselves; our actions are not guided by any noble thoughts but by self-concern. The protagonist’s impulse told him to be generous and fair but his mind did not agree.If he had listened to his impulse, his inner being would have been happy perhaps, but he would have…show more content…
Ultimately an external factor (losing money in a game of bridge) makes him consider the matter as closed. The more one ponders on matters of principle (here generosity), the more one tends to get miserly and when it comes to our mind to give money, perhaps the best way is to go with one’s impulse and be generous. But “impulse is the negation of magnetism” so one has to think to twice or thrice before parting with money. In conducting business deals, one should have a charming personality to attract customers as well as the shrewdness to earn profits from these customers. Hence one must have a magnetic personality so that potential customers are drawn to one’s business, but a business has to be very careful and calculative. He can’t give in to impulses of being generous or kind which will harm his business, and once a business transaction is completed, the relation between the buyer and the seller
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