My Lost Dollar

by Stephen Leacock
The text under consideration is a short story by a famous Canadian writer
Stephen Leacock, who is a worthy successor to the great classics of English and
American literature Charles Dickens and Mark Twain and is famous for his
humorous short stories, essays, and parodies.
“My Lost Dollar” is a short humorous story, as it reveals the situation in
which the narrator lent a dollar for a taxi to his friend Todd, and he completely
forgot about it, but the former owner of this dollar really wanted to get it back.
Writing with an intention to amuse the reader, the story mixes comical
expressions, moralizing, and self-pity to weave a story around a friend’s failure
to repay a loan of just one dollar. Resigned to his loss of the one-dollar loan, the
author relapses to introspection.
This story belongs to the belles-letters functional style, the main aim of
which is to influence on the human psyche, feelings, thoughts through the
content and form of poetic, prose texts created by the authors.
The text starts with the short retelling of the situation which happened
with the author. The usage of the possessive pronoun “my” at the beginning of
the story shows the importance of receiving money and tells us about the strong
relation of the author to those things which belong to him. The story has closed-
plot structure because we can see the beginning of the story, where the author
makes a short retelling of the situation, then we see the development of this
story and at the end we have moral end which teach us something new and show
the relation of the narrator to Todd.
The story last for one year as we can see from the words of the author:
“He has owed it to me for twelve months”, “Todd borrowed this dollar last year
on the 8th of April”. The author also mentioned that after he lent him money
“Todd came back within three weeks”. Thus, the duration of the story is one
year, but the narrator still remembers it. The temporal plane of the present is
found at the beginning of the story, where author tells us about his feelings as if
everything happens right now. It is revealed by the direct temporal marker now
and present tenses I meet Todd very frequently, I can realize whenever I meet,
He has owed it to me. The temporal plane of the past is found in the middle of
the story, when the narrator starts to retell what happened before. It is revealed
by the direct temporal marker last year and past tenses borrowed this dollar…,
needed a dollar…, he was about to leave. The temporal plane of the future is
found at the end of the text, when the narrator thinks about the result of this
situation for himself. It is revealed by future tenses It will make no difference, I
trust, to our friendship, I will immediately, no reader of this book will be
careless enough.
As the short story “My Lost Dollar” presents a retelling of the story. The
main type of narration here is monolog, which is interspersed with 1 st person
narrative phrases representing the speech of the narrator. The author chooses
narration as an effective means of showing the changes in person’s mind during
the process of thinking and making decisions.
The narrator depicts as being strongly interested in taking a dollar from
Todd, and it is him who the reader’s sympathies are with. The narrator cannot
think about other things, because in his head he always has an idea of receiving
his money. At the beginning of the short story the narrator shows that he is a
victim of this situation, and he tries to be polite and do not tell Todd directly
about the money which was taken. At the same time, it shows him as indecisive
person, which is quite negative characteristic. His speech is abundant in emotive
vocabulary. It can be words with emotive connotation e.g. adjectives frank
friendly – with usual positive connotation; painful – with usual negative
connotation. The latter, combining with the word combinations of different
adverbs hardly realized terribly, merely said, completely forgotten, practically
forgotten, theoretically probable mark the emotional state of the narrator. At the
beginning of the story, we can see that the author tries to remain friend with
Todd and do not show his own interest in money: our friendship, I really esteem
him. The authenticity of narrator’s speech is created due to the lexical and
grammatical peculiarities of the speaker, which tend to be worried about his
money so much and is very emotional. His speech tends to be more emotional,
hesitative and less certain from the point of view of communication.
On the contrary, Todd is portrayed as the narrator’s opposite. His coldness
and absence of true friendship is expressed in the short sentences: "Let me have
a dollar, will you!". He always avoids talking about money and shows that he
forgets everything. Moreover, he shows that he does not have money and is
tight-fisted person: I said, "Let's take a taxi up to the Club." But he answered,
"No, let's walk." He uses imperative constructions and short sentences. It shows
that Todd prefers not to spend his money. He is indifferent to the narrator and
his hesitation. He is not interested in conversation and making true friendship,
which he also shows in his note to the narrator: He merely said that the
temperature was up to nearly 100. The figure confused me for a moment. All
these sentences and Todd’s speech imply that he is selfish and rude.
All this is revealed by the excessive amount of grammatical structures,
expressing probability and conditional sentences but if any man borrows a
dollar from me I carry the recollection of it to the grave, If Todd owes me a
dollar and has forgotten it, it is possible — indeed it is theoretically probable —
that there must be men to whom I owe a dollar which I have forgotten , if I had
once forgotten a dollar, I should never pay it, on this side of the grave, If there
are such men I want them to speak out, expression regret “But if any man ever
lent me a dollar to pay for a taxi when I was starting for Bermuda, I want to pay
it” uncertainty “it’s sort of better, I’m afraid”, confidence “I am quite sure that
if I had once forgotten a dollar”.
As for narrative compositional forms, narration is used in the text.
Narration presents the unfolding of the plot.
The text under consideration is abundant in different lexical and stylistic
devices, peculiar to the monolog as a type of narration. Monolog reflects the
most typical features of long story and has long sentences: It will make no
difference, I trust, to our friendship, but I shall never be able to forget it. We can
see the usage of epithets: He meets me in the same frank friendly way as always;
hyperbole: On the other hand I know that I shall remember all my life that Todd
owes me a dollar, …I shall never be able to forget it. One of the most important
lexical and stylistic devices in the short story is repetition, which helps to reveal
the humor in the whole story. The author wants to show that the only thing
which is important for him as the narrator is a dollar, which is mentioned in the
text 23 times: owes me a dollar, my dollar, borrows a dollar, needed a dollar,
have a dollar, took the dollar, because of the dollar etc. There are also rhetorical
questions: You'd think a thing like that would remind him, wouldn't you?,
Certainly. Is a dollar enough? At the beginning of almost every paragraph we
can see the usage of anaphora: My friend Todd owes me a dollar, …that Todd
owes me a dollar, borrowed this dollar; inversion: There may be a list of them.
The more I think of it the less I like it, In conclusion may I say that I do
particularly ask that no reader of this book…; emphasis: In conclusion may I
say that I do particularly ask…; rhetorical exclamation: Let me have a dollar,
will you! The text has also references taken in brackets which give additional
information: (I mention the date in case this should ever meet Todd's eye). There
are also usage of direct speech which is taken in inverted commas: “"Let me
have a dollar, will you!" I said.
The short story consists of 6 toponyms: a Back to Honesty movement,
which the author mentions as a way to give other people money back,
University Club of Montreal – place where people should not leave their books,
the Detroit Athletic Club – place where someone lent the author thirty cents, the
Canada frontier – place around which the author travelled, Hamilton, Bermuda
– place from which Todd sent him a note. The author used the name Bermuda as
it has long and mysterious history and associate with a place from which people
cannot come back, the same as money which the narrator cannot take back.
Poland – place about which the narrator talked with Todd. It should be noted
that Poland used as a comparison to Todd, because he did not give a dollar to the
author as well as Poland would not give his debt.
 Leacock laughs at his unlucky hero, at his weaknesses and shortcomings,
but this is a good-natured, benevolent laugh with a considerable share of
sympathetic attention and sympathy. Perceiving the contrasts and contradictions
of life in their comical aspect, the writer never forgets that sometimes a drama is
hidden behind the external comedy of situations. This is how the sad humor of
this story arises, where in the fate of unremarkable people, in their everyday life,
the writer was able to detect dramatic collisions that reveal the loneliness of a
person, the lack of mutual understanding and participation, the triumph of rude
egoism.