Mariah Lane
Patricia Burris
Composition 1
November 19, 2018
The Ransom of Red Chief
“Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.:
We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless for you or the most
skillful detectives to attempt to find him. […] We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his
return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at the same spot as in the same box as your reply.”
(Henry, 51) Any good thief would know how to write the perfect ransom note, but for these two thieves
the response to their letter was truly a shock to all. Bill Driscoll and Sam were two men that needed
money to pull off a scheme in Illinois, but they were a few thousand dollars to short. When they came
upon the small town of Summit in southern Alabama, Bill and Sam had the great idea to kidnap a child
and then hold it for a ransom. After reading this story, one question that I kept asking myself was, “were
these two men criminals before they kidnapped the child?” The men lured the boy in with an unusual
way. They were nice to the child and that makes me wonder if they were inexperience with holding
someone for ransom. The more I read in the story, the more I started to believe that the suspicion was
probably true.
One thing that became very clear when I analyzed the story was the vocabulary in “The Ransom
of Red Chief” is unusual compared to modern language. The vocabulary came from many different
decades. The characters used complex words in place of simpler words. For example, O. Henry used the
word philoprogenitive, “which means having several offspring or showing love towards one’s offspring.”
(Webster) The two men believed that the town had many families and a kidnap would bring a big up rise
to newspapers in the semi-rural town. Another example of the strenuous vocabulary is the word
surreptitiously and it means to avoid attention or avoid being noticed. O. Henry used the term
describing the boy and the reply from his dad with the counter offer to the ransom. Mr. Dorset had tried
to avoid having to take is son back and that’s why he wanted the thieves to pay him. The vocabulary
that is used in the story could be described as a proper English, which was used in the 1800s to the
1900s. The style of language has changed throughout the centuries and many of the words used in the
stories are rarely used in modern language anymore. Another example of this was when Sam was talking
