I'm A Fool

A detailed Summary of I'm A Fool

"I'm A Fool" by Sherwood Anderson takes the reader into the mind of a lying, ambivalent, uneducated and somewhat foolish youth. Through his eyes we are told a humorous story of a foolish incident in which he compulsively lies to a beautiful girl in attempt to win her companionship. His plan backfires when he realizes that she likes him for who he is, not the imaginary character whom he claimed himself to be. The insightful theme which Anderson reveals in "I'm A Fool", deals with the inevitable consequences associated with dishonesty and deceitfulness, and he is able to effectively reveal this theme with the use of dramatic irony, a first person point of view, and various elements of character.

Dramatic irony is used occasionally by Anderson as a means of indirectly transcending his own thoughts. Such occurrences are suttle and difficult to detect because the nature of the story's first person point of view prohibits Anderson from directly expressing his own personal thoughts to the reader. For instance, the narrator believes that stealing, swearing, getting drunk, and bandaging horses is of far greater importance than a high school diploma or university degree. Anderson is implementing dramatic irony because what the narrator

Most of us know that being dishonest towards other people is wrong and always carries a consequence, yet we may deceive ourselves regularly without realizing it. We should understand that before we can be truthful to others, we must be truthful to ourselves. "I'm A Fool" by Sherwood Anderson is an enjoyable piece of literature with a strong message that will last a lifetime.

One aspect of "I'm A Fool" that the reader instantly becomes aware of, is its incorrect grammar and simple, unexpressive and reoccurring descriptive words. The story is riddled with simple adverbs and injections that are used to describe the narrators emotions such as "Gee whizz!", "peachy", and "gay". The narrator's primitive vocabulary in some ways prevent the reader from receiving an accurate portrayal emotion therefore making the reader guess what the narrator is feeling in certain situations. For instance, "Gee whizz!" is used to describe four seemingly different emotions: enjoyment (p.92), amazement (p.93), regret (p.96), and love (p.99). Sentence fragments such as this one, "I... got a pretty good place taking care of horses for a man who owned a teaming and delivery and storage and coal and real-estate business there." (Story And Structure, p.93) may seem to hinder the story, but in fact, it does the exact opposite. For instance, after reading the first paragraph, Anderson is able to

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Approximate Word count = 925
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English