Literary Analysis Of Stephen Leacock's Short Story 'The Speculation of Jefferson Thorpe'

The Setting of 'Mariposa'

1.Write a Literary Analysis Of a Short Story With An Argument And Support Of Your Own.

2.Use Correct Essay Structure As Outlined In The Course Documents.

3.Use Correct Academic Diction As Indicated In The Course Documents.

The paper intends to find out how Stephen Leacock has used a specific setting to enhance the essence of his short story namely, “The Speculation of Jefferson Thorpe” that has been published in the short story collection entitled, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (Eckert 202). The paper chooses to talk elaborately about how the setting of a small town occupies the heart of the stories especially the one mentioned above.

The fictional town where the story revolves around the small barber shop of Thorpe is called Mariposa. The town is supposedly located at the shore of the famous Lake Wissanotti. Although the town is not real yet starting from the church, maple tree to hotel mentioned in the story exist in real (Gonçalves). Therefore the portrayal of the setting of the town in the story plays not only a huge role in the construction of the structure but also it helps in showing the integrity and the authenticity of a small town. The characters that he had created through his vision are almost real who possess almost the identical identity of that of a small town dweller.

The shortcomings and the flaws of the characters are described in a manner that evokes fun along with pity that finally ads up to affection towards the character. The narrator has show the place to be important in an extravagant way by calling it the “storm centre” and the “focus point” of the entire turmoil. The barber shop in the story becomes the centre of attraction because the barber namely, Jefferson Thorpe is the owner of the shop who starts speculating the mining business (Gordon 40). In this story everybody loses his mind and leads to insanity due to the brooding greed over the mining stocks.

Amid all these chaos Thorpe manages to gather a lot of money by staying rigid at his position. He with his stubborn move does not let go a part of the mining stock form the Northern Star mine. Although he becomes rich yet the quick he became rich the quicker he lost his luck. He invested in a wrong place and lost all his fortune in a fraudulent case. From this incident, it is clear that the image and the overall impression of a small town that has been tried to be conveyed through the story could have been destroyed if this barber would have got rich and remains so. Therefore the clever storytelling technique that has been employed in the story shows that how the destiny of a small town decides the fate of its dwellers.

The story initiates with how the barber shop was not enough for Thorpe to have collected the amount one would have required. Hence he needed some other way to look into in order to get hold on some big amount. The story ascribes how the dwellers play the role of the puppet in the hands of the town. The town, even smaller in size does not refrain from controlling the lives of its citizens. Thorpe gets the opportunity to make money and loses it as well. It shows how without understanding that he is being fooled around in the whole setting he thinks that he is getting benefitted (Kiedrowski). However he is proved to be wrong at the end of the story confirming his fate to be one of those small town dwellers. This character symbolizes both honesty and foolishness at the same time. He becomes the victim of the fate that id the ultimatum.

Therefore it can be concluded that the story which has small town as its backdrop unknowingly does not let its dwellers to go beyond what is expected of them. The story shows the limitation, truthfulness and innocence of the characters portrayed in the setting.

References

Eckert, Kenneth. "“How Strange Life is!”: The Performative Narrator and Chaucerian Similarities in Steven Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town." (2019): 199-216.

Gonçalves, Davi Silva. "" Moving and changing in mariposa": a literary analysis and infidel translation of humour in Leacock's sunshine sketches." (2017).

Gordon, Jon. "Comic Heroes and Green Tories: Stephen Leacock and Thomas King Creating Ethical Space on Uncommon Ground." ESC: English Studies in Canada 43.1 (2017): 21-43.

Kiedrowski, Jonas F. The Revolution Will Not Be Satirised: The Revolutionary Potential of Stephen Leacock’s Satire. Diss. University of Saskatchewan, 2019.