The Sampler | Analyse | Ira V. Morris

Summary

The narrator enters a store where they sell puddings around the time of Christmas. He then notices that the store offers customers the possibility of sampling their different types of pudding, and he wonders whether some people may take advantage of this service.

The narrator then asks the shop girl about his suspicion. The shop girl tells him about an old man who comes into the shop every week and samples their puddings, but never buys anything.

She also tells him that the man is poor and that he deserves to enjoy the “free pudding”. The narrator offers the old man to let him purchase him one of the puddings.

The old man “jumped back as if he had been stung, and the blood rushed into his wrinkled face” (l. 40-41), and then asks the shop girl to pack the pudding for him.

Indledning
The Sampler is a short story written by Ira V. Morris and published in 1933. The Sampler takes place in 1933 around Christmas time.

The story is about an old man who weekly visits a pudding shop for free sampling, that’s why the story is named “The Sampler”.

We get to know three different persons, who each owns strong personalities. The story also educates us about generosity and curiosity.

Indholdsfortegnelse
Introduction
Summary
Characters
The narrator
The shop girl
The old man
Setting
Theme
Conclusion

Optimer dit sprog - Læs vores guide og scor topkarakter

Uddrag
The old man:

We get a lot of information on the old man’s outer characterization, compared to the narrator and the shop girl.

We are told that the old man is “poorly but neatly dressed” (l. 21-22), with a “large torn handkerchief” (l. 24), and a “shoddy overcoat” (l. 24-25). The shop girl calls the old man a “gentleman” (l. 9), which tells us that she believes that the old man was not always poor and needy.

The narrator has the same idea. He thinks about a time when the old man was well-off and could afford buying what he wanted, “Probably he had come down in the world and this sampling was all that was left him from the time he could afford to come and select his favorite pudding, which he would later carry home under his arm” (l. 30-33).