summary of poem haircut by Bernard shaw
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“Haircut” takes its title from the frame story, in which a barber is talking to a stranger in town as he cuts his hair. The barber is a naïve narrator who does not grasp the full impact of the story that he is telling. His narration concerns the town practical joker, Jim Kendall, who was recently killed in what everyone supposes was an accident.
The barber is a typical resident of a small, unnamed Michigan town near Carterville, who is telling the newcomer how, in his opinion, the liveliness of the town has diminished since the demise of Jim Kendall, whose shaving mug the barber still keeps on the shelf. He begins to illustrate Jim’s sense of humor by relating some of the practical jokes that Jim played, such as sending letters to men whose names he would see on signs of establishments in the towns that he passed through on the train. In the letters, he hinted that their wives were being unfaithful. The barber then fills in Jim’s background, describing how Jim lost his sales job and was reduced to taking odd jobs around town, spending most of what he earned on drink. Then, when his wife began trying to collect his salary before he got to it, he began borrowing against his wages in order to foil her plan, and, the barber adds, Jim punished her by inviting her and their two children to the circus, where he left them waiting at the tent entrance and never appeared with the tickets.
At this point in the narrative, the barber tells of how Doc Stair, a new doctor in the town, saw them and paid their way into the circus, thus incurring the enmity of Jim. The barber then describes how Doc Stair came to town and gradually built up a good practice, and how.