A Tone of Dramatic Irony in Haircut by Ring Lardner Essay

The tone of the short story "Haircut" is dramatic irony, for the remarks of the first-person narrator, Whitey the small town barber, have the opposite effect from what he intends. Whitey does not understand the implications of his stories when he describes Jim as a joker or "a card" and unwittingly shows him to be a mean and despicable man. At the same time, Whitey reveals himself to be as unperceptive, unintelligent, insensitive and adolescent as Jim himself. Whitey's misplaced admiration for Jim Kendall, a cruel, crude practical joker, establishes Whitey as a naive narrator. Lardner's choice of a naive narrator creates the ironic contrast which is the basis of Lardner's satire. Most of Jim's so called "jokes" were downright vicious. He was upset one day at how his wife had treated him so decided to get even. He told her that he would take the family to the circus, then left them waiting while he drank gin and lounged around a pool hall. Another time he sent Paul, who was slow witted, to fetch a left-handed monkey wrench from the garage when he knew well that a left-handed monkey wrench did not exist. He also took pleasure in humiliating Julie Gregg for being interested in Doc Stair and even went so far as to imitate Stair's voice on the phone and set up a phony meeting with Julie then chased her down the street when she showed up. The fact that Whitey narrates these stories in first person doesn't soften Jim's awful practical jokes but shows the barber's equally insensitive ignorance making Jim's character all the more plausible.Most citizens at the barbershop and pool hall admire Jim's "jokes" and even participate in ridiculing some of the secondary characters Lardner introduces in the story. By contrast, the secondary characters are sensitive characters (Doc Stair, Julie Gregg, and Paul) and they are the ones which stand out in the story and are victims of Jim and...