The story is told from the viewpoint of a young Londoner
named Norman Gortsby. He is certainly not a gentleman of leisure but probably a man with
a good position in a bank, brokerage, or trading house. The extended description of his
observations of the forlorn people coming out at dusk shows he is in the habit of
lounging on park benches and observing humanity. This habit has made him cynical. He has
undoubtedly been approached many times with hard-luck stories because he looks like a
good mark. He is well-dressed and has unguarded body language. The park bench is like an
open invitation for strangers to sit beside him--as park benches still are today. He
enjoys talking to strangers--but he has become hardened by city life and is not likely
to part with any of his hard-earned money. It is essential to suggest that the loss of a
sovereign is important to him. Many clerks had to work an entire week to earn a
sovereign, which was the same as one pound sterling before
decimalization.
An elderly gentleman is sitting beside
Gortsby when the story opens. This is noted only because the old man will have an
important role to play later. When this man leaves, a young man plops down beside
Gortsby and starts telling him a complicated story about not being able to find his
hotel after going out to buy a cake of soap and leaving almost all his money behind in
his room. The most important line in the story is the
following:
"Of
course," Gortsby said slowly, "the weak point of your story is that you can't produce
the soap."
Gortsby
has not asked the young man to produce the soap he claims to have bought. The
way Gortsby phrases his statement shows that he never believed the story and never had
any intention of giving this stranger money. Gortsby shows he is not the easy mark that
panhandlers and grifters have taken him for in the past. He knows, without even asking,
that this young man does not have a cake of soap in any of his pockets. The author
states specifically that the con man is wearing an overcoat. He could easily be carrying
the soap in his overcoat or suit or even in a pocket of his trousers--if he had any soap
to carry. It is almost as if Gortsby has X-ray vision, but what he has is sophistication
acquired from experience with grifters in a big city.
When
the young man leaves in a huff, Gortsby happens to find a wrapped cake of soap right by
the bench. This makes him experience a change of
heart.
"It's a
lesson to me not to be too clever in judging by
circumstances."
He rushes to
give the astonished young grifter a sovereign plus the soap. But then he sees the
elderly gentleman searching all around the bench and is told he is looking for a lost
cake of soap. Gortsby realizes he has been a sucker. Furthermore, the old man might have
left the soap there intentionally. Why else would he seem so certain the soap had to be
by the bench and nowhere else? He probably intended to come back and use it as a gambit
to start a conversation and then tell Gortsby the same story about losing his
hotel.
Gortsby goes from being hard-hearted to being
soft-hearted and then back to being harder-hearted. He was right in the first place in
distrusting people and evolving a cold and selfish urban
armor.
Gortsby's learning experience dramatizes Saki's
Social Darwinist message: It is a mistake to help the unfortunate because that only
rewards laziness, vice, crime, and welfare dependence, thereby increasing the legions of
Socialists and Communists.
No comments:
Post a Comment