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Just Lather That's All By Hernando Tellez

845 Words4 Pages

Nolan Clarkson Mrs. Daley ENG 2D1 26 March 2024. The Art of Decision Making Under Pressure. Have you ever had to make a hard decision? Was the pressure of making that hard decision starting to get to your head, but making it easier along the way? The novel “Just Lather, That's All” by Hernando Téllez is an amazing short story about a barber who has to shave a captain's beard. This captain is a well known killer, and throughout the whole story the barber must decide whether or not he should kill the captain, with many chances to do so, it is an internal fight between the right and wrong choice. The theme of Just Lather Thats All is that decision making under pressure helps make hard decisions more fluid and easier. This can clearly be seen when the captain walks into the shop, when the barber is about to give the captain a shave, and just as he finishes up shaving the …show more content…

The barber was sharpening his razors for his next customer when a captain who has murdered a lot of people walks in looking for a shave. When the barber recognized the captain, he “started to tremble”. Hoping to conceal my emotions, I continued sharpening the razor” (Téllez 1). This evidence proves how the pressure he was facing helped him make the decision by showing how the barber started to tremble in fear at the sight of the killer captain, showing he is nervous, it can also be seen that he is concealing his emotions, showing us how he is worried that the captain might find out that the barber is aware of what the captain does. These 2 factors when he was under pressure led him to the easy flowing, and quick decision to continue to sharpen his razor and not say, or do anything that could jeopardize himself. That is why the decision the barber had to make about the captain was made easier, and less stressful due to him being under

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Just Lather That's All Summary

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One day, a customer came in for a shave. However, this was no typical customer, the barber’s detailed description of the antagonist, Captain Torres hanging up his military cap, and bullet belt, which make him look like a violent person. It was described that the captain has just returned from capturing a band of revolutionaries and takes pride in his success on a difficult mission. Captain Torres went for a shave even though he knew

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Though “secretly a rebel” (p. 125), the Barber’s refusal to slit Captain Torres’ throat shows his willpower strength. His emotional control of the situation gives full maturity, manifesting into his want to live an honorable life. He surpasses continual difficulty of his want to change the outcome of the revolution. His admirable pride of skill and “preciseness” (p.

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Lather And Nothing Else And The Black Cat

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The narrator, a barber and a revolutionary, gets a visit from a general, who is an enemy of the revolutionaries. The narrator, while shaving the general, thinks about how to kill/hide the body of the general and how it would change his life. He does not, he sticks to his job as a barber and lets the general walk away without a nick. A different example

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Summary Of Just Lather That's All

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The barber says, “Yes, I was secretly a rebel, but I was also a conscientious barber, and proud of the preciseness of my profession.” (Tellez 49). This shows how the barber values his job and weighs it equally with his responsibilities of being a rebel. This displays that the barber makes

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Captain Torres places himself in an immense danger of being killed by the barber’s razor while also making the barber angry. He does this by talking about how he would kill the rebels and making it more brutal and bloodier than the last time when he says, “it may be even better” (p. 15), when the barber asks if it would be as horrifying as last time and then telling the barber “They told me you would kill me…” (p.17) while the barber’s razor is right beside his neck, but when Captain Torres is about to exit the barber shop, he tells the barber that he knew that the barber a rebel all along when the barber had thought that none of the captains of the revolution knew that he was a rebel. In “The Sniper”, the Free Staters sniper stays very still, making other people in the area think that no one is where he is unlike the Republican sniper who risks taking a smoke and gets all the people in the area’s attention. Although this type of conflict is very important, this also leads to another one of the conflicts that are similar in the two stories, man versus

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In Hernando Tellez’s short story, “Lather and Nothing Else”, Tellez successfully creates suspense throughout the story, a story about a barber and his dilemma of whether or not he should kill his enemy, who also happens to be his client. The story is entertaining yet suspenseful from using a variety of strategies to create suspense throughout the story. Tellez uses two main methods throughout the story, first person point of view and the two main conflicts introduced in the story. Since Tellez uses first person point of view it makes the reader feel like they are the main character himself. The reader goes through the main character's thought process, making readers wonder what the main character is planning.

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In Hernando Tellez’s “Lather and Nothing Else,” the barber is faced with an internal conflict that will define life or death toward a revolutionary that walks through his shop. This relates to the theme because in life, there will be conflicts and one should be calm and make the right decision. The barber shows his internal conflict;“I was stropping my best razor, and when I recognized him, I started to shake.” This showed fear ,and Predicament.

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I am a secret revolutionary, but I am also a conscientious barber, proud of the way I do my work” (346). After a long, hard battle with himself, the barber finally decides to let Torres live, regardless of the horrible things he has done. Although “[He is] a secret revolutionary” and feels he has the responsibility to kill

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In “Lather and Nothing Else” a short story by Hernando Tellez, the barber did make the right decision of not murdering Captain Torres because the barber doesn’t ruin his reputation and he knows that he’s not a murderer. By not killing Torres, the barber doesn’t ruin his reputation of being a barber which means he can keep doing his job. The barber is fond of how “[he’s] doing [his] job honorably” (Tellez par. 20) and that he is respected for how well he performs his job. Since the barber is known for being incredibly skilled at his craft, the thought of killing someone while doing what he is passionate about will be a great dishonor to him.

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