haircut

In Ring Lardner’s “Haircut” the narrator’s attitude toward Jim Kendall and his pranks slowly reveals the backbiting nature of small-town life and of the narrator himself. The setting of the short story is a small town barbershop. Most people have heard the saying, “ when you live in a small town everyone knows your business.” This short story stands true to the saying.

As one can find out from reading “Haircut” Whitey, the narrator, tells the readers a whole lot of gossip about the people of the town. An individual has to wonder if everything Whitey says is the truth. One day Whitey is giving a total stranger a haircut and goes into a flashback about Jim Kendall’s jokes and his “accidental shootin’”(103).

Jim Kendall was known as the joker of the town. He played heartless and cruel jokes on people despite the outcome. Jim was not much of a family man either. One time he invited his wife and children to the circus and he never showed up. Whitey says, “she’d of divorced Jim, only she seen she couldn’t support herself and the kids and she was hopin’ that some day Jim would cut his habits”(98). Jim never did change and just kept on with his jokes but eventually the joke would be on him.

Hod Meyers is Jim’s best friend. They do alm

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Even though the Doc thinks Paul is normal Jim calls him “cuckoo” (99). Jim did not let this bother him because “he was plannin’ one of his jokes” (101).

It was a few days later when Jim went into Whitey’s shop looking for Hod Meyers. Once Hod found out about Julie’s crush on the Doc, he rubbed it in Jim’s face. He is new in town and a “mighty handsome young fella” (99). Jim and his gang made sure that everyone in town found out, except for Doc Stair. Julie left the small town and went “away to school and Chicago and New York and different places and they ain’t no subject she can’t talk on” (100). Julie did not show her face in town for a long time. Julie rings the doorbell on Doc’s office door and there is no answer. Meanwhile Jim and his gang took a hiding spot to watch Jim’s joke take place. Whitey cannot come out and “brag about the subtle conspiracy for fear of what might happen to his friends, he cannot resist recounting the inexorable chain of key events” (Blythe 4). When Paul was young, he fell out of a tree and landed on his head.

Approximate Word count = 1328
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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