The men play along, presumably because they see no harm in the game, and perhaps imagining that it will keep Johnny distracted during the kidnapping. In an ironic inversion of the relationship being captors and captive, Johnny imagines he has taken Sam and Bill as prisoners named Snake-eye and Old Hank. Early in the kidnapping, Johnny assumes the character of Red Chief, a Native American warrior. Make-BelieveĪnother of the story's major themes is make-believe. Ultimately, the men pay the man his $250 counter-ransom and run out of town because they are traumatized by the boy who should have feared them. The kidnappers endure poetic justice to a further extent as Johnny wears down Bill's sense of sanity and Dorset responds to the ransom demand with a counter-proposition that involves the kidnappers paying him-the boy's father-to take Johnny back from them. Rather than distressing Johnny and his father to the point that Johnny is begging to go home and his father is willing to pay the ransom to be reunited with his son, Sam and Bill discover that Johnny prefers to be with them, and his father is not at all concerned to have the boy off his hands for a while. As kidnappers hoping to make a quick $2000 by upending the modest lives of a rural family, Sam and Bill find their criminal intention is answered with a punishment befitting their crime. At the heart of " The Ransom of Red Chief" is the theme of poetic justice, which means a deserved and commensurate retribution for one's actions.
0 kommentar(er)
