Jimmy is a
coward who betrays a friend
The
story ‘After Twenty Years’ is about two friends, who meet again after twenty
years. At the beginning of the story a policeman named Jimmy is walking down a street and
meets a man, who is telling him he is waiting for a friend whom he has not seen for
exactly twenty years. They made an appointment twenty years ago and then they moved apart.
After being told that story the policeman walks away. The other man is waiting for his
friend, who shows up after half an hour. They’re talking for a while, but the first
man discovers, that the other isn’t his old friend. It turns out that it is a
policeman, who arrests the man who is a criminal named ‘Silky’ Bob. The first
policeman was the friend, who recognised his old friend as ‘Silky’ Bob, and told
another policeman to arrest him.
Jimmy
has to choose between protecting his friend and implementing justice. If he chooses to say
nothing and let Bob walk, a criminal walks. But if he chooses to tell the police, like he
does, he betrays a friend.
I think, the author could have shown Jimmy’s dilemma better, if he had written the
story from his point of view. But if he had done that, there would not be the surprising
effect in the end, so writing the story from Bob’s perspective was not a bad choice
after all.
But
I do not like the choice Jimmy makes to betray his friend and then not even arrests him
himself. I think, he is a coward for just sending him a note and not even look him in the
eye. He could have at least told him everything himself, but he sends someone else to do
the unpleasant thing for him. After all Bob once was his friend and it just seems to me,
that Jimmy is a real backstabbing friend. I would rather have it that he does not arrest
him at all than to let another man arrest him.
So all together I think the story is not about friendship, but about a cowardish and
betraying friend.
Z.S.,
10c, Nov.2010
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The
short story 'After twenty years' by O.Henry is the classic subject about the good and the
evil: Two men, grown up together in New York, were best friends until they lost sight of
each other. One of them decided to leave the town to make easy money in the West and as a
result became a criminal, the other one felt connected to his home town and became a
policeman. To see what they would have achieved in the future they made an appointment in
exactly 20 years.
The
story takes place at this specific day. It is nearly 10 o'clock at night and really dark
out there. The policeman walks down the street and sees a man leaning in a doorway. This
man, Bob, promptly starts to explain what he is doing there in the middle of the night: He
tells him that he is waiting for a friend he has not seen in twenty years because they had
agreed to meet then and discuss how their lives have turned out; he himself succeeded and
got rich.
Twenty
minutes after the policeman left another man arrives and greets his 'friend' Bob; they
walk up the street to have a talk but when they stop in front of a drug store Bob realizes
that this man is not his old friend Jimmy as his nose looks completely different. It turns
out that the man just has pretended to be Jimmy and that Bob has been under arrest for ten
minutes. The policeman gives him a note which explains that the first patrolman had been
Jimmy and that he went because he could not arrest Bob himself when he recognized he was a
criminal wanted in Chicago.
The
problem here is Jimmy's inner conflict: he has to decide between his friendship with Bob
and his obligation as a guardian of law. He has the choice not to tell Bob anything and
just let him go or to arrest him himself. Both options seem to be impossible to him, so he
takes the middle way not to tell him who he is and let someone else detain him.
In
my opinion he solves the dilemma well, because he stays loyal to his friend in coming to
the arranged meeting and to the law in apprehending a criminal. In any case he would have
to make sure his friend goes to prison, because he swore to protect the public and pledged
loyalty to the law. And if he had not acted he would have a guilty conscience for sure, as
he seems to be a sincere person. Anyway, I think it is always difficult to find a solution
in cases like that, but you have to consider that the good of the community is more
important than one’s own well-being.
S.S.,
10c, Nov.2010
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