Bring out the humour in the trout story
Answers
In this episode the narrator makes a witty satire at all the fishermen community who exaggerate their stories of catching fish. Usually they tell false tales to the listeners, especially the strangers about their fishing skills. The narrator describes the fishermen’s art of telling lies in a very humorous after a funny incident that happened at Wallingford. He and George went to a riverside inn for a rest and drink.
As they sat in the parlour in the company of an old man, introducing themselves they were travellers. In the parlour they saw old glass-case, fixed very high up above the chimney-piece, and containing a very big trout. Intrigued by the fish, they asked the old man if he knew how much that fish weighed. The old man told them it was an 18 pound and six ounces fish he had caught sixteen years ago. The narrator and George admired him for his skills. Then the old man left.
They were still looking at it, when the local carrier, who had just stopped at the inn, came to the door of the room with a pot of beer in his hand, and he also looked at the fish. The narrator told him they were strangers there. The carrier told them that the fish they were admiring so much he had caught it five years ago. After telling them a convincing story he left.
In this manner one after another everyman that came into the parlour told a different version of his tale and claim on the fish, including the owner of the inn. At last George in an attempt to look at the fish from close angle, stood on a chair. He lost his balance and fell; the fish case also fell and broke. The fish broke into thousand pieces. It turned out to be fish made out of plaster of Paris.
Jerome and George visited a village about which they had no knowledge. They saw an old glass-case in the parlour of an inn. It contained a big trout. They were fascinated by the fish.
George asked an old man, Jim Bates what would be the weight of the fish. The old man understood that they did not know anything about the place. So he started boasting that he had caught the fish with a minnow sixteen years ago and the fish weighed eighteen pounds six ounces.
The local carrier named Joe Muggles who came in after him claimed that he caught the fish just below the lock with a fly. He said that it weighed twenty-six pounds. Another man named Mr. Jones came in and said that he caught the fish with bleak. After that George asked a serious-looking middle-aged man named Billy Maunders how he caught the trout. The man told him that when he caught it, it broke his rod. He said that the fish weighed thirty-four pounds. The landlord laughed at the stories told by the others. He told them that he caught the fish when he was a boy and was bunking his class.
After the landlord went away George climbed a chair to have a better view of the fish in the glass-case. But he slipped and the glass-case fell down. The fish which was made of plaster of paris broke into a thousand pieces.
So they came to know that all the men had been telling false stories about the way in which they had caught the fish.