I’m a Fool (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Sherwood Anderson
- First Published: 1922
- Type of Plot: Psychological
- Time of Work: About 1919
- Setting: Rural Ohio
- Principal Characters: The narrator, Lucy Wessen, Wilbur Wessen, Burt
- Genres: Psychological fiction, Short fiction
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age, Class conflict, Adolescence, Emotions
- Locales: Ohio
The Story
The narrator is a nineteen-year-old boy whose life revolves around his job as a swipe at a local racetrack. Though it is a menial job with no future, the young man brags to the reader about it, describing it in a sort of homespun lyricism that purportedly shows his genuine feelings about his career among horses, jockeys, and trainers. Significantly, his best friend and fellow worker is a black man, Burt, and the young man boasts of the good life that they lead, traveling from track to track tending the horses. What the reader infers from all this is that the swipe's...
[The entire page is 1276 words long]
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