UNIT – 4
AFTER TWENTY YEARS – O’HENRY
Q1) Describe the character Bob in the story ‘After Twenty Years’.
A1) Bob is presented first as a man who has returned to New York at the age of thirty-eight, having spent the last forty years making a fortune somewhere in the West. Though it is a story of two friends, our first protagonist is Bob. The whole text centres on Bob as he waits at the designated place to meet his friend after 20 years. In the initial part of the story, his character is described through the help of his appearance that mostly indicates his wealth and gives us the impression that he is a hardworking man who has done well in the last 20 years. He emerges as a loyal friend who has returned to meet his friend and to fulfil a promise even after a gap of 20 years. He comes across as a really good human who has not forgotten his old friend even after achieving so much in life.
But as the story progresses, it is revealed that Bob is not exactly the man we think he is. He is not a gold miner or a rancher, but a wanted criminal. Instead of a good scrupulous man, he turns out to be a wanted criminal who has accumulated all the wealth through the wrong channels. His true identity is illuminated as the end of the story is reached – he is identified as ‘Silky Bob’ who is a wanted criminal in Chicago.
There are, however, some hints of his dishonesty earlier in the story which can be seen in one of his sudden, nervous speech upon being approached by a police officer.
Q2) Describe the character Jimmy in the story ‘After Twenty Years’.
A2) Our second main character is Jimmy Wells –the friend Bob is waiting for, who is now a policeman. Yes, Jimmy Wells is a New York City police officer. He is forty years old at the time when the story takes place and joined the police force at some point during the previous twenty years. In worldly terms, he has not been particularly successful, as he is still a patrolman and has not risen through the ranks of the police force. However, he is presented in the story as a dignified and respectable figure and a commanding presence in the city where he keeps order.
Initially, it is not clear that the policeman who first meets Bob is in fact Jimmy and we see him as the antagonist, someone who leaves Bob waiting alone. We know more about Jimmy’s character indirectly through bob’s words –
“But I know Jimmy will meet me here if he’s alive, for he always was the truest, staunchest old chap in the world. He’ll never forget. I came a thousand miles to stand in this door to-night, and it’s worth it if my old partner turns up…. He was a kind of plodder, though, good fellow as he was.”
However, Bob’s only criticism of Jimmy is that he is “kind of a plodder,” without the initiative and ambition to make something of his life.
The depth of the Jimmy’s character emerges as the story ends. It becomes clear that Jimmy is still a good friend and a ‘truest, staunchest old chap’, someone who also values his duty as a policeman. Jimmy does not appear to be a particularly imaginative or dynamic character, but he is good at his job, in the sense of being adept as well as being trustworthy. He quickly recognizes Bob, both as his old friend and as a wanted man, and prevents himself from doing or saying anything that would allow Bob to recognize him, despite the fact that Bob is expecting to meet him there. In this sense, he surpasses his old friend in shrewdness. He carefully checks that Bob intends to remain in the same place for at least half an hour before leaving him. This demonstrates that, although Jimmy is sentimental enough to avoid arresting his old friend personally, his first concern is with performing his duty as a police officer and ensuring that the criminal has no opportunity to escape. He therefore stands as an archetype of the public official who is able to entertain personal feelings but finally puts his duty before every other consideration.
He chooses his duty but since he sends someone else to arrest Bob and spares his friend with the agony and the feeling of betrayal which prove that he still cares and cherishes the bond of friendship he shares with Bob.
The letter he writes for Bob tells deeply about his true character.
“Bob: I was at the place on time. I saw the face of the man wanted by Chicago cops. I didn’t want to arrest you myself. So, I went and got another cop and sent him to do the job. JIMMY.”
Q3) Describe The tall man in the long overcoat in the story ‘After Twenty Years’.
A3) The third character is our antagonist. His name is not mentioned in the story and is referred to as the 'tall man in a long overcoat’. It is a flat character, except for his personality, attire, and height, nothing else is provided. Despite lacking depth, the character plays an important role during the climax of the plot.
Q4) Explain ‘Friendship versus Duty’ as the theme of the story.
A4) “After Twenty Years” was first published in 1906 by O. Henry. The action takes place, therefore, during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency or earlier, at a time when the United States had a strong ethos of public duty, based on the values of the Roman Republic on which it was modelled. There is no sign of any struggle in Jimmy Wells’s mind between the claims of friendship and duty. If he ever considers letting his friend go for old time’s sake, the author does not mention it. The only concession he makes is to avoid arresting Bob himself. Even then, as he leaves Bob to wait, he ensures that he will stay where he is long enough for the plainclothes detective to arrest him.
Given Jimmy’s apparent single-mindedness in pursuit of his duty, it may seem that the question of friendship versus duty is too easily decided for it to be a major theme. However, the author, who sometimes goes so far as to break the fourth wall and tell the reader what he thinks in other stories, does not align himself with either character or perspective here. Bob never considers the possibility that Jimmy will betray him to the authorities. He does not know that Jimmy is a police officer, but he might still have considered whether such an upright citizen would call the police on discovering that his friend was a well-known criminal. It may be that he thinks Jimmy will never discover this, and does not propose to tell him, but his praise of Jimmy is, nonetheless, consistently directed toward his private character as a friend. Jimmy is his “best chum,” his brother, true and stanch, the type of man who will never forget a promise. This suggests that Jimmy might at least feel a pang of remorse on reflecting that Bob’s personal loyalty is to be his undoing. Whether his decision to leave Bob’s arrest to another man is due to such remorse, to sentimentality, or to moral cowardice is for the reader to decide, as is the larger question of whether he is right to place public duty above friendship.
Q5) Explain ‘how time changes people’ as the outline of the story.
A5) “After Twenty Years” concludes with three surprises in quick succession. First, Bob realizes that the man who claims to be Jimmy is not Jimmy. Second, it is revealed that Bob is a well-known criminal. Third, Jimmy confesses in his note that he was the police officer to whom Bob spoke at the beginning of the story. All these surprises show different aspects of the changes wrought by time.
Either Jimmy or Bob or both of them have changed so much that Bob does not recognize Jimmy, despite the fact that he is expecting him. He then fails to realize that the second man he meets, who claims to be Jimmy, is not his old friend. It is only when they pass the brightly lit window of a drugstore that he notices a physical feature that does not change with age, the shape of a man’s nose. He asks if he is Jimmy. The other man says that he is not and that Bob has been under arrest for the past 10 minutes. He tells him to come with him quietly and hands him a letter, which says:
“Bob: I was at the place on time. I saw the face of the man wanted by Chicago cops. I didn’t want to arrest you myself. So, I went and got another cop and sent him to do the job. JIMMY.”
Q6) Give the analysis of the story.
A6) “After Twenty Years” first appeared in O. Henry’s second short story collection, The Four Million, published in 1906, alongside such famous stories as “The Cop and the Anthem” and what is perhaps the author’s best-known work, “The Gift of the Magi.” The story is highly characteristic of O. Henry both in its final twist and in its sentimental moralizing. Like most of the author’s stories, “After Twenty Years” was written in the last eight years of his life, after his release from prison, where he had served three years for embezzlement. Despite the light, amusing ironies of their endings, these stories have something of the didactic tone of the reformed convict, preaching that crime does not pay.
Apart from the unnamed police officer who arrests Bob at the end of the story, there are only two characters in “After Twenty Years”: Jimmy and Bob. The two men are intended principally as archetypes rather than as individuals. Jimmy symbolizes law and order, honesty, public duty, and slow, steady progress along a straight path. Bob is his polar opposite, dishonest, fast, and flashy in dress and behaviour, ruthlessly pursuing success without thinking or caring about the law. The contrast between the two is established early. Before the reader knows who he is, Jimmy is seen walking along the avenue in an impressive manner, “a fine picture of a guardian of the peace.” Jimmy is not wealthy and has not made a material success of his life as Bob has. However, he is strong, confident, and commanding in his role as protector of public order.
Bob, by contrast, is leaning shiftily in a doorway. As soon as he sees a police officer approach, he is so nervous that he blurts out the story about the appointment made twenty years ago before Jimmy has said a single word. Throughout their conversation, Jimmy is laconic and unemotional, confining himself to matters of fact and brief questions, while Bob talks at length about Jimmy. There is an obvious irony here: Bob claims to have known Jimmy well and to remember him clearly, yet he fails to recognize the man standing in front of him, whom he was, after all, expecting to see. Jimmy, on the other hand, seems to have had no difficulty in recognizing his old friend. This is partly because Bob’s memories of Jimmy are all about his character, or an idealized memory of it. Although he has “got on” in a tough environment, whereas Jimmy has not, Bob is romantic and impractical in this respect. However, the difference in their attitudes is also partly to do with the fact that Bob is all too accustomed to having to explain himself to the police and unconsciously treats the conversation as an interrogation. Jimmy has no such reason to be nervous.
Bob is sentimental in the way he romanticizes his friendship with Jimmy, and Jimmy also displays a degree of sentimentality in his reluctance to arrest Bob himself. Sentiment is related to love, but it is love of the least heroic and most self-centred variety. Jimmy ensures that Bob will be punished and pay his debt to society but excuses himself from the painful duty of being the one who arrests his old friend. He makes no sacrifice and spares only himself in making this gesture. Jimmy, therefore, definitively chooses public duty over friendship. However, the reader has no notion of whether Bob would have sacrificed either his freedom or the lesser value of a successful criminal career to his friendship for Jimmy, and there is nothing in the story to suggest that he would have done.