FREE ESSAY ON RING LARDNERS HAIRCUT ANALYSIS

RING LARDNERS HAIRCUT ANALYSIS

Creative Writing Analysis
Of Ring Lardners
HAIRCUT
By
Stephan M. Arleaux
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world
was being watched keenly and closely by intelligence greater than man's and yet as mortal
as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were
scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might
scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
--H.G. WELLS, The War of the Worlds 
INTRODUCTION
Analysis is a delicate task, for if we agree that the whole is likely to be greater than
the sum of its parts and that we cannot always know the dancer from the dance, we will
want to avoid any mechanical taking apart of a work for fear of murdering to dissect.
Our class discussion of the literary world has suggested that we want to focus attention
first on the story, and that we are interested primarily in how the manifold parts
contribute to the total meaning. 
This is not, however, to say that the total meaning is merely a summing-up of components,
or that even the simplest lyric is a blandly homogeneous object: the various parts of a
work are not absorbed into the whole. 
One of the most pervasive ideas in contemporary criticism is that a literary piece of any
value is a complex unity, that it includes within itself various tensions-contrasts,
oppositions, and even apparent contradictions. It may exhibit, for example, tension
between strict artifice of form and naturalness of language, or as in Haircut, between a
cool, detached manner of writing and a subject matter that includes violence and passion.
The contrasts within Lardners story Haircut, between wise innocence and the grimly comic
an sardonic tragedy, are further instances of tension. The elements strain against each
other, but in doing so they help to hold the story together.
The author is the ultimate source of being of every person, place, thing, and event in
the work. Lardner knew all there was to know about these creatures of the imagination. He
had to decide whether it was desirable to exploit this special knowledge in short, on the
point of view most appropriate to the story being told. Did he make the right choice? You
decide.
POSSIBLE POINTS OF VIEW
First person or third person?
The Author seems to have chosen both. The story is told from the inside. When we speak of
a story told from the inside, we mean this story is told by one of the characters in the
story. Stories told from the inside are generally spoken of as examples of first-person
narration, since the narrator uses the first-person pronoun I in references to himself.
( I got another barber that come over from Carterville and helps me out Saturdays.) You
the reader become an interested, listener character (You're a newcomer, ain't you? I
thought I hadn't seen -you round before.  I hope you like it good enough to stay. *** Did
you see Gloria in Wages of Virtue? You missed somethin'! *** Comb it wet or dry?)
Lardner stretches the envelope and has the narrator lapse from First to Third person at
will. Usually stories are told from the outside by a nameless narrator who may be more or
less closely identified with the author are usually spoken of as examples of third person
narration. The term (rather an awkward one perhaps) is derived from the fact that the
narrator refers to all of the characters in the story in the third person: he, she, they,
Him and Hod proper name (Missus. Bennet), or descriptive phrase or title (the Doc, the
Coroner).
Omniscient or limited?
Again, the author seems to have chosen both. The distinction between first-person and
third-person narration is often made and has its uses. Nevertheless, a distinction based
merely on grammatical form is likely to be superficial. (We shall see, however, that this
apparently superficial distinction will have significant implications.) A still more
basic distinction is that exploited by Lardner between omniscient and limited narration.
The omniscient narrator:
The Author has chosen to throw convention to the wind and endow his godlike knowledge of
the fictional universe he has created and co-employed an omniscient narrator. Within the
framework of this fictional text, the omniscient character narrator simply knows
everything. This narrator can at will enter the mind of any character and tell the reader
(a character) directly what the character is thinking. The omniscient narrator is, as a
rule, also omnipresent. 
That is, our character narrator will at one moment, be in the heart of the city-or even
another city, at the next, in a remote lake spot in the country.
(Of course, he never knew what really come of none of these jokes, but he could picture
what probably happened and that was enough) 
This narrator moves with a similar freedom through time, taking us from the present in
one sentence to the past in the next. And the only motive required for the omniscient
narrator's moves from mind to mind, from place to place, from time to time is the
predilection to tell the story as well as he can.
(I suppose he was plottin' to get Paul out in the boat and play some joke on him, like
pushin' him in the water. Doc examined the body and said they might as well fetch it back
to town. They was no use leavin' it there or callin' a jury, as it was a plain case of
accidental shootin'.)
Lardner carries this technique very far indeed (too far perhaps for the tastes of some
readers), for his character narrator not only knows everything about the people and
events in the story. 
(She'd of divorced him only they wasn't no chance to get alimony and she didn't have no
way to take care of herself and the kids. She couldn't never understand Jim. He was kind
of rough, but a good fella at heart.)
He knows as well a good deal about the town in general and frequently interrupts the
narrative proper for the purpose of introducing-sometimes seriously, sometimes
ironically-bits of moral or philosophical allegory. 
You know, in most towns of any size, when a man is dead and needs a shave, why the barber
that shaves him soaks him five dollars for the job; that is, he don't soak him, but
whoever ordered the shave. I just charge three dollars because personally I don't mind
much shavin' a dead person. They lay a whole lot stiller than live customers. The only
thing is that you don't feel like talkin' to them and you get kind of lonesome.) 
Such interruptions, we may point out, are not necessary part of the technique of
omniscient narration and are generally avoided by twentieth-century authors who employ
omniscient narration. For the mark of the omniscient narrator is not philosophizing but
the faculty of knowing all.
The omniscient technique is essentially a third-person technique. Even when, as in
Haircut, the narrator is a participant in the action and refers to himself in the first
person, the actual participants in the action remain in the third person.
In addition, this omniscient narrator is highly flexible. As we have suggested, in
omniscient narration there was virtually no limit to what the narrator was able tell us.
This narrator gave us what the story demanded, and more. 
(Well, Julie come up to Doc's door and rung the bell and they.was nothin' doin'. She rung
it again and rung it seven or eight times. Then she tried the door and found it locked.
Then Jim made some kind of a noise, she heard it and waited a -minute, and then she says,
Is that you, Ralph? Ralph is Doc's first name. *** Years ago, Jim used to travel for a
canned goods concern over in Carterville.*** When Doc first come to town, Paul seemed to
feel like here was a real friend and he hung around Doc's office most of the while. The
only time he wasn't there was when he'd go home to eat or sleep or when he seen Julie
Gregg doin' her shoppin'.)
Although omniscient narration is in one sense a particularly natural technique; but in
this sense an essentially unnatural one. After all, in life there are no omniscient
people. 
First-person narration, on the other hand, exploits a rather different possibility. We
often take the first-person narrator to be completely reliable, or at least we don't
consciously question that reliability. In Haircut, when Whitey, the narrator, makes
judgmental statements we don't question his judgment. There is no evidence to cast Whitey
as an unreliable narrator. In part, this is because the judgment seems born out by the
facts the narrator has given us; that is, our acceptance of the judgment is based on our
prior acceptance of Whitey the narrator's reliability as to the facts. 
In addition, we understand the narrator's vantagepoint as contributing to his
reliability: an older, mature, more experienced Whitey is passing judgment on his
younger, immature, contemporaries Jim and Hod. Beyond this, we might say that everything
in the text implies that this is the right way to see the narrator.
SYMBOLISM AND ALLEGORY
Several of the settings mentioned by way of example--Hardy's Egdon Heath, Forster's
Howard's End, Joyce's snow, and Dickens' fog might be referred to as symbolic. 
Indeed, the subject of setting in fiction, like that of imagery in verse, is very likely
to lead into the more difficult problem of literary symbolism, a problem which we have
now to consider.
Because the term is applied in various ways, there is probably no single neat definition
for it that is quite satisfactory. A symbol may be any object that suggests a larger
meaning than itself, such as:
(And Jim's is the cup next to Charley's.  James R. Kendall. Jim won't need no shavin' mug
no more, but I'll leave it there just the same for old time's sake.) 
All literary works in this sense are symbolic and so is every word. Lardner uses a less
precise approach, to objects that has been given conventional significance by a history
of general usage, like the cross, a symbol of Christianity.
He applies the abstract idea of Christianity: having Docs office up stairs placing the
Doctor and his office, his work on a higher ground both morally and spiritually, closer
to God as it were. He also uses the childlike innocence of the character of Paul
Dickson.
( But I was goin' to tell you about a poor boy we got here in town. No harm in him, but
just silly. Jim Kendall used to call him cuckoo; *** When he looked out Doc's window and
seen her, he'd run downstairs and join her and tag along with her to the different
stores. *** The poor boy was crazy about, Julie and she always treated him mighty nice
and made him feel like lie was welcome, though of course it wasn't nothin' but pity on
her side. *** Doc done all he could to improve Paul's mind). 
Haircut contains distinct allegorical elements, for example, In the traditional allegory,
every major character is likely to be a personification of at least one quality or idea,
and, very often, the settings are typical rather than particular. 
Doc Stair represents the Christian soul and does not have to be taken literally as a
human being in order to make sense. Another way of putting it is to describe Doc Stair as
a simple allegory, or the extension of a metaphor. Instead of saying that the Christian
soul is like a wanderer in this world, beset by temptations and trials, Lardner tells a
story of this wanderer and shows him being attacked by personified temptations or
frustrated by projections of his own weakness and folly. 
( Doc Stair come here about a year and a half ago. He's a mighty handsome young fella and
his clothes always look like he has them made to order. He goes to Detroit two or three
times a year and while he's there he must have a tailor take his measure and then makein'
him a suit to order. They cost pretty near twice as much, but they fit a whole lot better
than if you just bought them in a store. 
For a while everybody was wonderin' why a young doctor like Doc Stair should come to a
town like this where we already got old Doc Gamble and Doc Foote that's both been here
for years, and all the practice in town was always divided between the two of them.
Then they was a story got round that Doc Stair's gal had throwed him over, a gal up in
the Northern Peninsula some wheres, and the reason he come here was to hide himself away
and forget it. He said himself that he thought they wasn't nothin' like general practice
in a place like ours to fit a man to be a good all round doctor. And that's why he'd
came.). 
It was difficult for this writer of allegory to maintain an exact parallel, so that, for
instance, everything Doc Stair, does in Haircut can be said to represent something that
the virtue of chastity does. In fact, because the story is so complicated, this so-called
one-to-one relationship of the personification to the idea is not perfectly consistent. 
Nevertheless, appears to be radically inconsistent-when a character is sometimes strictly
and merely allegorical. 
(Well, it seems, while they was cryin', Doc Stair came along and he asked what was the
matter, but Mrs. Kendall was stubborn and wouldn't tell him, but the kids told him and he
insisted on takin' them and their mother in the show. Jim found this out afterwards and
it was one reason why he had it in for Doc Stair.), and sometimes not (He said Paul had
asked him what he thought of the joke and the Doc had told him that anybody that would do
a thing like that ought not to be let live.)
In this most complex allegory, there is something more than a one-to-one relationship,
because the story operates on several levels. Doc as the Coroner represents authority in
one aspect as well as the abstraction Chastity. Julie provides a one-to-three
relationship of image and idea in certain passages. 
( She's been away to school and Chicago and New York and different places and they ain't
no subject she can't talk on. *** I guess it was what they call love at first sight. But
it wasn't fifty-fifty. This young fella was the slickest lookin' fella she'd ever seen in
this town and she went wild over him. *** Poor Julie She didn't show up on Main street
for a long, long time afterward.)
This indicates that Lardner has drawn from a medieval tradition of interpreting events
upon three levels at once-the literal, the moral, and the anagogical. 
In Haircut, the form of a Doctor and Coroner can literally represent the human spirits,
but also signify politically the legitimate imperial power, morally the virtue of
justice, and mystically the healer, and sometimes the heavenly state of souls which are
unified in their beatitude. 
The allegory becomes so complicated in this instance that it is very close to what is
commonly called symbolism. Moreover, in fact many allegorical works, like Haircut,
include elements that must be considered symbolic according to even the most rigorous
definition.
There are several ways Lardner has defined symbolism so as to distinguish it from
allegory. In his allegory, the meanings of the tale are meant to be clear, almost Karmic
whereas his symbolism provides overtones (Docs office upstairs, totally unrealistic for a
Doctor) and suggests a meaning rather than keys; the characters in this allegory are
cardboard-flat, albeit Stock, the Butcher, the Baker, the candlestick maker but in this
symbolic work Lardner allows us to look behind the stock-cardboard characters, who in
their own right seem to be complicated people. 
IMAGERY 
More specifically, Metaphor, in this narrow sense; as Sophocles tells us that Emotion is
like the waves of the sea, that is a simile, a figure that explicitly compares two terms
instead of equating them. 
Ordinarily a simile uses the word as or the word like. 
(You'd of thought it was a reserved seat like they have sometimes in a theayter. *** So
I'd say, No, Jim, but you look like you'd been drinkin' somethin' of that kind or
somethin' worse.). 
There are other tropes as well.
( Well, he's got an Adam's apple that looks more like a mushmelon.) 
Lardner speaks to us in buried or submerged metaphors of space, about moving ahead, or
looking backward, Jim's loss of his job, falling into debt and rising above difficulties
but he never rises above his debt or fall below his troubles.
Lardner uses an equally familiar form called a Metonymy, making a name or thing represent
another thing or person: ( Jim was a Card) another more sophisticate example might be:
the critic who writes that Lardner was influenced by Spenser, means that Lardner was
influenced by his reading of Spenser's poetry, not directly by the man himself.
Themes are not apparent from a casual reading. Thus, although it is perfectly obvious
that Lardner uses the metaphor of clothing as a unifying device, expanding on the
metaphor to include certain real clothes which he regards as symbolic, it is not so
obvious what the recurrent dramatic images of clothing in Haircut reveal: that the
allegoric symbol of Christianity is falsely robed in his ill-fitting garments therefore
they must be tailored to gain the respect of his flock, or that he cannot at last
successfully disguise or symbolically alter his naked humanity.
Lardner flirts with dangers in the method that focuses attention upon imagery, especially
the imagery of metaphor. 
The greatest of these is that one will distort the meaning, of this short story by
failing to observe how the implications of metaphorical language are contained and
controlled by the plot, and by the characterization. Is it Doc, who uses the images of
animal lust-and by all the elements of the whole structure? 
(Doc had told him that anybody that would do a thing like that ought not to be let live.
(((Protecting his Pride/Harem)))) 
or Jim, 
( He finally seen he wasn't gettin' no wheres with his usual line so he decided to try
the tough stuff. He went right up to her house one evenin' and when she opened the door
lie forced his way in and grabbed her.) 
TONE 
Here we are touching on a larger subject, one that involves all the elements of style,
including diction, imagery, syntax, sound, and rhythm. This is the subject of tone. 
Although the word is now and then used loosely as if it were a synonym for atmosphere or
mood, the usual and more precise sense of literary tone is the expression of attitude,
the equivalent in written language of a tone of voice. If we ask in what voice, with what
intonation, a lyric or a scene or a passage from a story should be read aloud to
communicate the speaker's or the character's or the narrator's attitude, then we are
asking, about the tone. 
I have a tendency on commenting on this term to want to limit it, so as to imply only a
speaker's attitude toward his auditor. But when we read this unique narrative prose, the
storyteller must be considered to speak to us as auditors; and in the language of many
narrators, at least, there seems to be no definite feeling toward the reader, the
listener. To be sure, older novelists, like Lardner, address the reader, and assume the
level of the Listener without cajoling, condescending, sympathizing, or otherwise showing
an attitude toward us. It may be more useful then, to broaden the definition, and to
think of literary tone as the expression of attitude toward objects specified or implied.
One of the objects attended to indeed, in this narrative work, is another character whom
the speaker addresses (The reader in the chair). 
The tone here is neither defiant nor despairing, but a calmly serious one, serious and
yet not solemn, friendly but not too familiar. Whitey's tone is established by diction. 
Lardners literary tone, like a tone of voice, is easy, or modest,
(You're a newcomer, ain't you? *** I thought I hadn't seen -you round before. *** I hope
you like it good enough to stay. As I say, we ain't no New York City or Chicago, but we
have pretty good times.) 
detached of sentiment, straightforward, and ironic.
( Not as good, though, since Jim Kendall got killed). 
There are even varieties of tones within the work, as the scenes and speakers change. But
the different tones are not well distinguished between the shifting tones of characters'
speeches and the over-all or controlling tone, which is Whiteys easy-going, small town
gossipy nature. At times the narrator's tone in Haircut shifts too far or too often,
however, the result can easily be a little confusing, even incoherence. Haircut suffers
from this failure, because at certain points the main characters and the main actions of
the story are treated lightly, with almost a comic effect, and again at other times these
people and their actions are described in highly serious language. 
(... him and Hod Meyers used to keep this town in an uproar. I bet they was more
laughing' done here than any town its size in America.
Jim was comical, and Hod,' was pretty near a match for him. Since Jim's gone, Hod tries
to hold his end up just the same as ever, but it's tough goin' when you ain't got nobody
to kind of work with. *****
They used to be plenty fun in here Saturdays. This place is jam-packed Saturdays, from
four o'clock on. Jim and Hod would show up right after their supper, round six o'clock.
Jim would set himself down in that big chair nearest the blue spittoon. Whoever had been
settin' in that chair, why they'd get up when Jim come in and give it to him. ***
You'd of thought it was a reserved seat like they have sometimes in a theayter. ***** For
instance, they'd be a sign, Henry Smith, Dry Goods well, Jim would write down the name
and the name of the town and when he got to wherever he was goin' he'd mail back a postal
card to Henry Smith at Benton and not sign no name to it, but he'd write on the card,
well, somethin, like Ask your wife about that book agent that spent the afternoon last
week, or Ask your missus who kept her from gettin' lonesome the last time you was in
Carterville. And he'd sign the card, A Friend.
Of course, he never knew what really come of none of these jokes, but he could picture
what probably happened and that was enough.
**** I suppose he was plottin' to get Paul out in the boat and play some joke on him,
like pushin' him in the water. Anyways, he said Paul could go.) 
Probably the most difficult tone Lardner deals with is the ironic. 
Irony of tone, or verbal irony
Lardner is careful not to confuse the reader with irony of event, or dramatic irony,
although both means of sharply contrasting appearance with actuality are used. 
Dramatic irony occurred when his characters on the page acted upon assumptions so far
opposite to the truth that there is a striking discrepancy between what they believed and
what the reader or the audience recognizes to be the fact. 
(I said it bad been a kind of a raw thing, but Jim just couldn't resist no kind of a
joke, no matter how raw. I said I thought he was all right at heart, but just bubblin'
over with mischief. Doc turned and walked out.
At noon, he got a phone call from old John Scott. The lake where Jim and Paul had went
shootin' is on john's place. Paul had come runnin' up to the house a few minutes before
and said they'd been an accident. Jim had shot a few ducks and then give the gun to Paul
and told him to try his luck. Paul hadn't never handled a gun and he was nervous. He was
shakin' so hard that he couldn't control the gun. He let fire and Jim sunk back in the
boat, dead.
Doc Stair, bein' the coroner, jumped in Frank Abbott's Flivver and rushed out to Scott's
farm. Paul and old John was down on the shore of the lake. Paul had rowed the boat to
shore, but they'd left the body in it, waitin' for Doc to come.
Doc examined the body and said they might as well fetch it back to town. They was no use
leavin' it there or callin' a jury, as it was a plain case of accidental shootin'.
Personally I wouldn't never leave a person shoot a gun in the same boat I was in unless I
was sure they knew somethin' about guns. Jim was a sucker to leave a new beginner have
his gun, let alone a half-wit. It probably served Jim right, what he got. But still we
miss him round here. He certainly was a card. 
Comb it wet or dry?)
The term irony has come more recently to take on rather larger meanings than any yet
mentioned. A philosophical sense of so-called Cosmic irony pervades the work. 
Nevertheless, perhaps this is not strictly a matter of tone so much as one of belief.
This sense of irony, which is really an extension of the romantic irony in Haircut, does
not oppose what is apparent to what is real, but a partial reality to another partial
reality; the ironic tone, according to Lardners usage, is a refusal of complete
commitment to any single view of things as too simple. 
CONCLUSION
We return once again to the theme of choice. This work of fiction as a complex but
coherent form determined by a series of choices, unconventional choices (especially in
point of view vs. omnicense) made by Lardner in the process of composition. 
In truth, the author is always omniscient. Nevertheless, Lardner has chosen to tell the
story through a narrator who is not omniscient, but thinks he is. In addition, this
choice, as much as any other made by Lardner, has formal, moral, and philosophical
significance. It is not merely a matter of technique (whatever that might mean) but part
of the meaning of fiction.