Names: Date:

Pallares Santiago July 29

Zerna Orellana Johan Carlos

Short Story Analysis Worksheet

Title: The Poet and the Peasant
Author O. Henry

Characterization
Main Characters Description

Protagonist: A young man from Ulster County with light blue eyes,
corduroy trousers, Straw hat, wisp of hay that
Peasant (Haylocks) stumbled off the West Shore ferryboat.

Antagonist: An speaker telling of “a poet friend of mine” who

Writes a nature poem but due to the opinion by the
Narrator editor, indignantly condemns him .

Other character: An artist with his dyed mustache and shiny,

Good-natured eyes that edged up to the countryman.
Bunco Harry

Other character: A city-bred fiction writer, who despised “bucolic

Scenes”. He writes another poem called
Conant “The Doe and the Brook”.

Setting
Place: Brooklyn Descriptive details from the story:

Time: The story takes place in Brooklyn, New York. The year or season is
not mentioned, but we have a reference in one of the paragraphs
that said: “The Reubs haven't dressed like that since '79. I doubt if
you could work Brooklyn for a key-winding watch with that lay-out.'”.
So with this reference the story takes place after the ‘79.

Can be more than one!

 Order of Events (circle one)
Chronological Flashback

The story starts from a

present event to return
to past events.

Narrative Point of View (circle one)

First Person Third Person Limited Third Person Omniscient
First Person

The Poet and the Peasant is characterized by being narrated in the first person. The reader is the
narrator of the story.

Mood/ Tone
Mood: Descriptive details:
Indignantly - The story made us feel sadness with the case of the peasant. There is a
Adjective: reality that people trust in other people according to how they are dressed.
- Another feeling we had reading this story is to be optimistic and try again if
we fall.
Tone: Descriptive details:
Adjective: - The author’s attitude about the events of the story is kind of ironic
- The mistrust of the poet when he read the first poem.
- The mistrust of the people about the peasant.

Plot (summarize each)

Conflict (Indicate whether it was internal or external along with your description):
It was an external conflict

Exposition
- The Editor said that the first poem was “too artificial”.
- The second poem was from a fiction writer who sent his poem to the editor.
- The story of the poems stopped and continued with the peasant.
- Haylock went to the city looking to go into a business.
- Haylocks(peasant) had $950, he got that for the share of his grandmother, but people didn’t
believe his story.

Rising Action:
- I think the author raises action when The story of the poems stopped and continued with the
peasant.
Climax:

- When Haylock was looking for some help to start a business, Bunco told him “You’ll never do
it in that clothes”.
- Haylock thought that if he wants folks to notice him in New York he must dress up like they
do.’,

Falling Action
- The author cut the story of the peasant and went back to the beginning with the editor
reading the poem of Conant.

________________________________________________________________________________
Denouement:
- The editor thought that the poem "The Doe and the Brook" is like a representation of
someone whose life has been heart to heart with nature.
So, the moral can be chosen by reader, “Stay on the Farm” or “Don't write Poetry.”

Theme (What is this Story about?)

Overall impressions/opinions/etc:
The Poet and the Peasant carries certain irony throughout the story, which opens
as a first person narrative, the speaker telling of “a poet friend of mine” who
writes a nature poem recently and submits it to an editor. Having spent his entire
life in close contact with nature, he produces “a living pastoral”. The editor
rejects it as being too artificial. While launching together, “several of us”, the
narrator continues, indignantly condemns the editor. Among the group is Conant,
a successful, city-bred fiction writer, who despised “bucolic scenes”. He,
however, writes another poem called The Doe and the Brook. The writer
describes his work as “a fine specimen of the kind of you would expect from a
poet who had strayed with Amaryllis only as far as the florist’s windows, and
whose sole ornithological discussion had been carried on with a waiter”. He
signed it, “and we sent it to the same editor”.
At this point, my curiosity have been thoroughly increased; O. Henry uses irony
to emphasize some special features of the characters like Haylocks or Bunco
Harry and disclose some serious problems and to embody his feelings towards
somebody or something. Personally, the irony can make the stories more
humorous and more significant.