the cop and anthem summry
Answers
Answer:
The short story " The Cop and The Anthem " by O. Henry is about a homeless man called Soapy who notices once in a cold night on his park bench that he has to try to do everything that is possible in order to get into prison for three months to survive the winter.
Attempts…
His first attempt to get there is to dine in an expensive restaurant and to tell the waiter afterwards that he cannot pay the bill. When Soapy goes into the restaurant the head waiter has him thrown out directly because of his outward appearance.
For his second attempt he throws a stone into a shop window. But this attempt also fails because the policeman doesn't believe that a real "lawbreaker" would stay still waiting to let himself voluntarily be arrested and when the policeman sees a man running along the road he assumes that the running man must be the guilty person and pursues that man.
In his third attempt Soapy eats in a restaurant and says afterwards that he can not pay the bill. But the waiter doesn't call the police and isn't interested in Soapy anymore…
… and more attempts
When Soapy discovers a young woman near a policeman he sees his chance to get into prison. He walks towards the woman in order to harass her but she behaves as if she wanted to talk to Soapy at the same moment and hangs on to him so much that he must shake her of at the next corner.
Because this attempt fails he behaves as if he were drunk in the proximity of a policeman. But the policeman ignores Soapy because all the policemen had been informed that the students from yale are celebrating a party that night.
Even his sixth attempt namely stealing a man's umbrella, fails because the man had stolen the umbrella from somebody else before.
End
When Soapy walks along the road he suddenly stops in front of a church. The atmosphere created by the light shining through the coloured windows of the church and also by the organ music to be heard on the road outside the church makes Soapy start thinking about his life. At the same moment as Soapy decides to start a new life a policeman comes towards him and arrests him because he is not allowed to stand there.
Soapy is condemned to three months in prison as he had wanted it all the time!