Good Essay On Jim Kendall

Many decisive observers have revealed that Ring Lardner's superlative work was made in the field of ironic humor. The story “haircut” is absolutely an example of his more irony than humorist work since the spoof of this short story had some certainly disgusting and awful rudiments. The story is related to the happenings happening in a small town which is told by a barber during his work. He narrated about the death of a real joker named as Jim Kendall.
Jim Kendall is characterized as central, humorist and an antagonistic character in the story “Haircut”. Although it seems awkward that a character is performing leading as well as an antagonistic role in a same story since, Jim was the opponent of those with whom he behaved erroneously. In fact, the writer had narrated a number of persons in the story with whom Jim had made obnoxious stuff for the sake of his recreation. In the story, the pleasure of his fun was making jokes which had never overlooked to entertain the people.
On the other hand, Jim created most of his funs on sacrificing others as he committed funs either doing trouble or embarrassing people. The thing which made him to characterize as an antagonist of the story was about his married life since Jim was described as a bad husband specifically at the moment, when he was jobless after getting fired from his job. It was not only job which made him antagonist as even before this incident, his wife already did not want to live with him, but she was unable to divorce him due to the fact that they had children.
Some of his mean, malicious and spiteful jokes had hit her family life. The verdict can be exemplified with the occasion when he told his two kids along with his wife that they are going to visit the circus. Instead of taking them to the circus, he just went to Wright’s Pool Room the whole day and he never took his family to the circus. This instance proves disrespectful and erratic nature of Jim.
Jim had not only created mischief for his wife and kids, but also for other characters of the story. The following are some of the instances of his mischief. The first among this list was the behavior of Jim while travelling when he send postal cards to anonymous people. He noted the names of those people from their signature made during transit in the train. Mischievous messages grounding troubles were spread through those cards since he told them that their wives were not faithful to them. This joke was treated as the great trick of Jim since he used to say like investigate your spouse of the book agent who had spent an afternoon with her last week or investigate your missus about the one who had saved her from getting alone when you were in Carterville. Moreover, he used to sign the cards with the name of a friend.
Another instance of his comic nature can be narrated from the fondness of naming cuckoo to those people who had their head off and the victim in the regard was Paul. Jim always made fun of Paul in the story since Paul was shown as a mentally impeded boy of the town. Jim used to send Paul to garbage in order to find a left-handed monkey wrench which had no existence.
Jim’s mischief also included his fond of duplicating voices to make fun of others. Even Jim made fun of the narrator by his cruel acts which were carelessly ignored by Whitey. Jim used to mimic Mrs. John Scott’s voice. While standing outside Whitey’s shop, he said that her husband was no more and he would come to shave him. When Whitey went to their home and Mr. John Scott unlocks the door, then Whitey understood that Jim is playing a fun with him.
Julie also became one among victims of Jim. She was a woman in the town, who dislikes Jim, but instead of her, Jim likes her and in an attempt of being closed to her, she got more irritated of him. The attempt was to rape Julie and afterwards, he humiliated her by means of a real joke.
All the misconducts the narrator told about Jim paid a serious price at the end of the story. Jim was fortuitously shot by Paul in a duck-shooting. Ironically in the end, Jim became the silly one for letting a brain-handicapped child hold a gun.
Hence concluding the facts, Jim Kendall is a bad, improper, comic, leading character of the story. Therefore, this story is the example of antagonist as a major character. He is often called as an antagonist due to the fact that he has made many quarrel activities with the protagonist personae. Although he was not a lovable person of the town yet, his absence was really felt among the people who were victims of his annoying jokes.