The Ransom of Red Chief, by O. Henry

Full House (Chapter 4: The Ransom of the Red Chief, minute 1.05.15) 

Another film

And the one of the picture!

Academic activities

SUMMARY

Bill and Sam had all of a sudden an idea, or, better, an inspiration, and this idea was kidnapping a child and getting a lot of money for his ransom. They looked for a very calm and quiet place far from the bustling and populated cities. Then they choose a wealthy citizen with a lovely child. They also looked for a place to keep the hostage until they get the ransom.

They found their prey and took him, but the boy fought back. In the end they could carry him to their hideaway.  However the boy, once in the cave in the mountains, enjoyed the situation: he was camping out, nothing he ever did, and felt happy and started to play pretending he was an Indian, the Red Chief. He demanded that the two kidnappers played with him. He was so excited that nobody went to sleep until the small hours of the morning. Bill and Sam knew that the boy wouldn’t escape.

The next day he got up very early and started to play Indians again. He was trying to cut Bill’s scalp. Sam saw it just in time to take the knife from the boy’s hands. Sam also had to be watchful because the “Red Chief” had said he (Sam) was to be tied to a stake and burned to death.

Bill and Sam expected that patrols would roam around the country and the mountains searching for the boy, but the landscape was quiet as ever.

The boy attacked Bill again and Sam had to restore peace. But the child went on being mischievous, especially with Bill.

Sam decided to immediately send a message to the father asking for the ransom and giving instructions about how to pay it and recover the boy, the time and the place. He went to another village to send the message, and all was suspiciously calm too.

When he got back to the cave, the boy wasn’t an Indian anymore: he was a scout, and Bill his horse. Bill had to carry the boy on his back for a long way and now he was exhausted. So, he couldn’t bear the boy anymore and decided on the spot to send him home and forget about all the business. But unfortunately for Bill, the boy came back to the kidnappers: he was having such a great time!

Sam asked Bill to have a bit more patience: at night the business will be completed, and they would get rich and free from the naughty boy.

At the right time and the right place, a messenger arrived by bike. But, instead of the ransom, he left a note in the place. It was from the father, and it said…

 

QUESTIONS

What do you know about Stockholm syndrome?

What can we make of King Herod legend?

What is your opinion about educating children at home and not going to school?

 

VOCABULARY

flannel-cake, undeleterious, Maypole, philoprogenitoveness, lackadaisical, bloodhounds, passer and forecloser, brake, hitched, court-plaster, buzzard, warpath, broiled, possum, pesky, rubber for, pard, imp, dote on, yeomanry, dun, fold, niggerhead, stockade, foil, hoss, chawbacons, whiskerando, yodel, wabbled, oats, Bedlam, ewe, leech, calliope

The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde

Some films: 

The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)

Frame of The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

Wilde (1997)

The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960)

Happy Prince, "La importancia de llamarse Oscar Wilde",  (2018)

The importance... a radio play: BBC audio

The Importance of Being Earnest was a very successful play in London at the end of the 19th century, but its performances stopped when Oscar Wilde became convicted for “gross indecency” and sent to prison.

There are some versions of the same play. Ours has three acts.

In the first act, Algernon Moncrieff gets some visitors at home. The first visitor is his friend Ernest Worthing; in his visit, we discover that his real name isn’t Ernest, but Jack (a form of John). Algernon also finds that Ernest is the tutor of a very beautiful young ward called Cecily Cardew, and immediately he falls in love with her.

Next visitors are his aunt Augusta (Lady Bracknell) and her daughter Gwendolen. While Aunt Augusta, with the help of Algernon, is selecting some music for a party she’s going to have that evening, Ernest/Jack proposes to Gwendolen, and she says yes. Aunt Augusta comes back suddenly, reproaches the couple’s behaviour and attitude and, obviously, cancels the engagement. However, she asks some questions to Ernest/Jack in order to discover if he is an eligible man for her daughter; when she knows that he has no parents and has been adopted, she discards him absolutely and forbids him to approach Gwendolen.

By chance (and listening attentively) Algernon gets to know Cecily’s address in the country, and decides to visit her.

 

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 and died in Paris at the age of 46.

He was the son of an important poetess of the Irish Literary Renaissance.

He went to Trinity College in Dublin and then to Oxford. After that, he settled in London, where he got the reputation of a clever wit for his writings and lectures. His epigrams and paradoxes are famous. He also went to the USA to deliver lectures.

But he got his literary position thanks to his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and to his play The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). He also wrote some short stories, e.g. The Happy Prince, and some poems, e.g. The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

At the age of 30, he got married and had two children.

Wilde prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry (Lord Alfred Douglas’s father, his lover) for criminal libel and lost the trial. As a consequence of the information appeared in the trial relative to his sexual behaviour (“the love that dare not speak its name”), he was arrested and sentenced to two years of hard labour. Once he got out of prison, he went to Paris, where he spent his three last years of life, impoverished and abandoned from everybody.

His tomb is in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.