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Jimmy Valentine Character Analysis

1172 Words5 Pages

Lera Ramsay
Hour 5
District Performance Event
“You’re not a bad fellow at heart,” (Henry, page 1), were the words the warden of the prison said to Jimmy the day before he was released. Jimmy Valentine was a professional thief that could break through any bank vault he wanted. While in the small town of Elmore, he falls in love with with a girl named Miss Annabel Adams, the daughter of the man who owns The Elmore Bank. After that day, Jimmy stopped robbing banks and turned into Ralph D. Spencer. Jimmy Valentine was dedicated to living a moral life because he changed his life around for Annabel, he has integrity, and many people saw him as a good man after he changed.
Jimmy Valentine was dedicated to living a moral life because he changed his …show more content…

For example, Miss Annabel Adams knew him as such a good man that she agreed to marry him. If Annabel saw him as anything less, she wouldn’t have married him. Also, it only took a year for them to become engaged, which shows that Jimmy had to have been a good, kind man. Additionally, Ben Price let Jimmy go even though he knew about Jimmy’s past crimes. Ben Price, the man that had been searching for Jimmy for years and knew if all of his crimes, let him go after he saw him save Agatha’s life in the bank. It only took one encounter with Jimmy for Ben to know that, even after all he’d done, he had changed for the better. Not to mention the fact that the entire town of Elmore saw him as a good, trustworthy man. In the text, it states that Jimmy “...had won the respect of the community,” (Henry, page 3), within a single year. Jimmy had worked extremely hard to accomplish this, and the entire town knew that, they knew that he was a genuinely nice person. To sum everything up, Jimmy was committed to living an honorable life because he was truly a good man and many people knew him as …show more content…

To start off, people might think that Jimmy wasn’t dedicated to living a virtuous life because he continued to rob banks after he got out of jail. While this is true, Jimmy did eventually stop robbing banks after he was released. In addition to this, some may claim that Jimmy was not devoted to living a moral life because he broke open the vault at the end of the story. Although Jimmy did break into the bank vault, he didn’t do it to steal money. The reason he broke into the vault was to save Agatha. Lastly, some people might say that Jimmy was not committed to living a moral life because he married Annabel just to get easy access to her father’s bank so that he could rob him. While this is just an inference that cannot be backed up by textual evidence, Jimmy would have no reason to go through with this elaborate plan. Jimmy has easily broken into bank vaults before and has never had to use a lengthy, unnecessary plan. Unless he truly wanted to change his life, he wouldn’t have followed through with a plan like this. Overall, it can be proven that Jimmy Valentine was truly devoted to living a dutiful

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