What Will Happen?

Author’s note: This is a prediction piece on the short novel Ransom of the Red Chief by O. Henry. It is on what will happen after that book has ended.

Mice allergic to cheese, policemen getting arrested are both examples of irony. Another example is this short novel. In Ransom of the Red Chief two people kidnap a kid, but soon find out the kid has them trapped. They ask for a ransom of money to the parents but the parents soon decline and offer them to take the kid off their hands for a price. Afterwards they run getting as far away from the kid as possible. That was where the short novel ended but the story does not have to end there as well.

After the two men run they will split up. One of the men will star earning a honest living while the other keep on kidnapping. Without the help from his partner the kidnapper keeps on failing. He loses all of his money soon and finally gets arrested for kidnapping. The partner hears of this and bails him and they start earning a honest living together continue the friendship they had.

Why I predict this is because the man who want to start earning a honest living was the one who suffered more from the kid. He did not want to go through that ever again so he quit and wanted to live honestly. The other man did not learn his lesson so he kept on trying to kidnap. He could not do it with just himself and fails and loses all of his money. He got arrested because after he became broke, the sheer desperation for money and made him less careful. The partner however still thought of his friend and he was lonely. He wanted his friend back and when he heard he got arrested he bailed him so that they could start living honestly together.

Background knowledge on what pain, desperation, and friendship can do to a person also helped predict this. When someone goes through lots of suffering because of something they would want to quit doing that. That is what happened to the person who suffered from the kid. He had enough of it and quit. Also when someone gets desperate they don’t think straight and they make mistakes. That is what happened to the person who lost all of his money. He got desperate and finally got caught kidnapping. Friendship can make people go out of their way to help their friends. That is the person who was making a honest living bailed his friend so that they could be with each other again.

That is what I predict happens to the kidnappers. The background knowledge helped predict what would happen because without it we would not know what their actions could have been. Pain, desperation, and friendship are all things that happened in the prediction and knowing how those have been a part of other books and movies helps.