just lather.

Falling Action: The Captain sits up, thanks the barber, and pays him.

Resolution: We learn that the Captain knew of the barber's dilemma all along. His parting words are as follows: "They told me that you'd kill me. I came to find out. But killing isn't easy. You can take my word for it." The final impression is one of the Captain's courage and coolness and the truth of his observation.

There is very little action in the present of the story. There are only two characters, and the entire story takes place in a small-town barbershop. A military officer walks into the barbershop and asks the barber for a shave. He sits in the chair, and the barber prepares his razor and shaves him. The captain talks a lot. When the barber is finished, the captain stands up and pays him. He makes one final statement and walks out.

The structure involves the intersection of this current action in one spot with information about recent actions and with the barber's thoughts. The captain has not had a shave for four days, he tells the barber, during which time he and his men were finding and killing rebel leaders. We only know the thoughts that he speaks out loud. The barber, in contrast, speaks little, but we are given many of his thoughts. As a rebel, he considers killing the captain but decides to let him live.

This relationship of speech and thought is changed in a twist at the end. The captain reveals that he incorrectly believed he knew the other man's thoughts. This twist slightly blurs the apparently clear dichotomy between the men.

The situation of the story is given in the first few paragraphs. A military man, who we come to know as Captain Torres, enters the barbershop. The barber, who is narrating the tale, becomes very nervous, but tries to hide his emotions from his customer:

Hoping to conceal my emotion, I continued sharpening the razor.

The complication comes when we realise that Captain Torres has just been out hunting rebel forces. The barber confesses that he is a member of the rebel group, and therefore an enemy of Captain Torres and implacably imposed to what he stands for. Captain Torres also shows himself to be a cruel torturer of rebels, describing the torture of rebels as "A fine show" as he forced all of the villagers to go past the "mutilated" hanging bodies, which were then used for firing practice.

The central conflict that the barber faces is whether he should take advantage of the ideal opportunity and kill his enemy or whether he should do his job "honourably" and give him a good shave. Note how the barber describes the options open to him:

Murderer or hero? My destiny depends on the edge of this blade.

However, the resolution comes when the barber decides that he does not want to be a murder and just wants "lather" on his hands, and not blood. The sting in the tale at the end of the story lies in the fact that all through the silent, internal deliberation of the barber, Captain Torres has known that the barber is a rebel:

In the doorway he paused for a moment and said, "They told me that you'd kill me. I came to find out. But killing isn't easy. You can take my word for it." And he turned and walked away.

Hernando Tellez's short story "Just Lather, That's All" is about a barber in a small town or village in a Latin American nation—the author's native Colombia, perhaps. The people in this nation are suffering, as many did for many years, the tribulations of guerrilla warfare and a corrupt, brutal government that exhibits little inclination to defer to such niceties as the "rules of war," which prohibit the deliberate targeting of civilians and demand due process of law for those suspected of rebel ties. This is frontier justice and, within the small sector of this country, Captain Torres is the police, the jury, and the executioner. When Tellez's story begins, the military officer enters the barber's shop and demands a shave. The problem and the tension in this story derive from the barber's affiliation with the rebel movement that is fighting the government Captain Torres represents. For all the barber knows, that affiliation is unknown to his customer. The soldier and the barber engage in the seemingly usual banter while the barber contemplates his responsibility towards the rebel movement to take the opportunity to slit the captain's throat with the razor that is otherwise to be used for shaving. This banter, however, reveals the brutality of the conflict and the cavalier attitude of the captain towards those he has captured in the field. In the following exchange, the barber, who is also the story's narrator, asks the captain how many rebels the latter captured on his latest patrol:

"How many did you catch?" I asked.
"Fourteen. We had to go pretty deep into the woods to find them. But we'll get even. Not one of them comes out of this alive, not one."

It is this discussion of the captain's plans for his prisoners that leads to his invitation to the barber to come to the school at six o'clock to witness the prisoners' final moments. Captain Torres is known for executing his prisoners, but not before torturing them for information and for entertainment. In response to the barber's query regarding the captain's intentions for the prisoners, and assuming their execution, the officer replies,

"Come to the school today at six o'clock."
"The same thing as the other day?" I asked, horrified.
"It could be better," he replied.
"What do you plan to do?"
"I don't know yet. But we'll amuse ourselves."

At this point in the story, the reader knows that the barber is torn between his responsibility to the rebels to assassinate the captain sitting vulnerably in the barber chair and his dedication to his craft: barbering. What the reader does not know, and will not until the story's final sentences, is that the captain knows exactly who is this barber shaving his four-day-old growth. So, when considering the reason why the captain invites the barber to the school, where tortures and executions will take place, the barber, and the reader, can surmise that the captain, presumably ignorant of the barber's true nature, is merely inviting this inquisitive merchant to a day of macabre festivities, like one of the boys. The real reasons, however, can only be deciphered following the captain's revelation that he is fully aware of the barber's identity: "They told me that you'd kill me. I came to find out. But killing isn't easy. You can take my word for it."

The real reason for the invitation is to expose the barber to the treatment the captain has in store for him on the basis of the barber's sympathies for and cooperation with the rebels. It serves as a very serious warning that the military knows who he is and that he can expect the same should he threaten the captain in any way.

Captain Torres has just returned from a four-day hunt, and he has returned with fourteen captive rebels. He plans to punish them later that afternoon, at 6 p.m., and he wants to be sure that the barber is present. We find out at the end of the story that Torres has suspected the barber of secretly being a rebel, and his visit for a shave is in part due to find out if this is true. Torres allows the barber to shave him--a perfect opportunity to slash the captain's throat. But when the barber merely provides his customer a shave, without spilling a single drop of blood, Torres leaves the shop assuming that the barber is not a part of the revolutionaries--or else too cowardly to commit murder in such a manner. The captured rebels will be executed at 6 p.m., possibly by firing squad, but Torres suggests that their punishment may be "a little slower," since torture has been involved before. All loyal citizens will be expected to attend, and the barber will probably show up to watch his friends suffer in order to keep his secret hidden from Torres.

There are no heroes in Hernando Tellez's short story, "Just Lather, That's All." Although Captain Torres' visit to the barber shop could be considered an act of bravery, the captain's many acts of barbaric brutality against the rebels could never classify him as a hero. His manner of rounding up the rebels and then torturing before killing them could never be classified as heroic. The barber may well have become a hero to the rebels and their supporters had he killed Torres, but only by committing an act of murder himself. However, the barber thought better of it, in part because he was worried about the consequences that he would face afterward.

At the end of “Just Lather, That’s All” we find out that Captain Torres recognized the barber as a rebel who could have murdered him.

When Torres first walks into the barber’s shop, the barber is nervous.

When I recognized him I started to tremble. But he didn't notice. Hoping to conceal my emotion, I continued sharpening the razor.

We think that the main reason for the barber’s agitation is that his customer is a dangerous man who, before demanding a shave,

took off the bullet-studded belt that his gun holster dangled from.

Even though the barber is “upset,” he engages Torres with casual conversation and performs his job calmly. Before he starts lathering Torres’s face with soap, the barber reveals that Torres is a barbaric murderer who executes the town's “rebels” and mutilates their corpses.

As the barber continues his work grooming Torres, we find out that the barber himself is one of the people hunted by Torres.

I was secretly a rebel, but I was also a conscientious barber, and proud of the preciseness of my profession. And this four-days' growth of beard was a fitting challenge.

This dual identity creates a moral conflict for the barber—should he slit Torres's throat while shaving him or uphold his professional duties as a barber?

Despite Torres’s murderous rampage against the barber’s people, the barber cannot bring himself to shirk his professional responsibilities. In spite of his conscience, the barber dutifully and expertly shaves Torres’s beard, all the while believing that

Torres did not know that I was his enemy. He did not know it nor did the rest. It was a secret shared by very few, precisely so that I could inform the revolutionaries of what Torres was doing in the town and of what he was planning each time he undertook a rebel-hunting excursion.

So it was going to be very difficult to explain that I had him right in my hands and let him go peacefully—alive and shaved.

Yet at the end of the story, Torres reveals that indeed he knew all along that the barber was a rebel.

In the doorway he paused for a moment, and turning to me he said:

"They told me that you'd kill me. I came to find out. But killing isn't easy. You can take my word for it." And he turned and walked away.

Torres could have killed the barber just as easily as the barber could have killed Torres—and yet, neither men make that fatal choice.