The Cop and the Anthem

Essay

The Cop and the Anthem’ is a short story by the US short-story writer O. Henry, whose real name was William Sydney Porter (1862-1910). His stories are characterised by their irony, their occasional sentimentality, and by their surprise twist endings. ‘The Cop and the Anthem’ contains all three of these key elements of an O. Henry story, which focuses on the adventures of a homeless New York man trying to get himself arrested so he can spend the winter in jail, so he can escape the cold of the streets.

In "The Policeman and the Anthem" there is only one character who is given a name, the main character "Soap and". It becomes clear that Sope is homeless, one of the lower-class men and women who flocked to New York in the early years of the twentieth century. Throughout the story, we observe the unsuccessful attempts of the main character to get into prison.

The text consists of 2 types of speech description and reasoning. The 1st paragraph and 8th paragraph of the text are the largest. The author describes the approach of winter with mild irony and unexpected combinations of characteristics. The author describes in detail the signs of the approaching winter in his characteristic. ("When wild geese honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves un- you know that winter is near at hand").

The volume of this semantic block is determined not only by the vivid recreation of natural phenomena but also by the description of the hero's state, his feelings, and reflections that are "overheard" by the author, through which the reader learns about some of the life experiences of Sophi as he seeks to shelter himself from the cold ("For years the hospitable Blackwell's had been his winter quarters") and his moral beliefs. His inner world is revealed as he reflects on prisons and charitable institutions, comparing and evaluating his experiences in them.

His subsequent actions are described. The hero's reflections lead him to the conclusion that state-sponsored charity is burdensome because one has to pay for it, if not with coins, then "you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every benefit."

The last paragraph ends, as does the first, with a situation of action. While in the first semantic block the actions (Sophi rises and leaves the park) are driven by his hope of encountering a policeman, at the end of the eighth semantic block, his desire has been realized, even though it was a dream. Thus, in this block, both key words of the title "The Cop and the Anthem" find themselves in one context. However, it seems that their initially intriguing opposition remains unresolved for the reader, merely prompting him, now well-informed about Sophi's journey, to ponder this paradox.

Throughout the story, the author keeps the tension between reality and the hero's imagination.  In the subsequent middle blocks, the main character uses all his ingenuity to turn what he wants into reality. The meeting with the policeman who arrested him and the judge's decision complete the "development" of the plot, which unfolds sequentially, creating a mental integrity marked in the title with the word the Cop.

The analysis shows that all narrative (event) situations, having a specific content, are characterized by several common features of their structural and semantic structure. Each of them includes: 1) Sopi's idea of the violation of order he intended, 2) the development of the event, 3) the behavior of people standing guard over the order, 4) an emotional assessment of Sopi's condition and 5) his understanding of the prospects for achieving the goal.