Sedgewick Bell In The Palace Thief By Ethan Canin

In the short story, “The Palace Thief” by Ethan Canin, Canin introduces the character, Hundert, the narrator. Hundert describes himself as moral, humble, loyal, passionate, and a bit regretful. Canin then introduces the second character, Sedgewick Bell, as Hundert describes why Sedgewick Bell is incompetent, thoroughly annoying, a bad influence, and why he has a great disliking towards Sedgewick. After Hundert has had a time of disciplining Sedgewick, this leads toward having a meeting with his father, the Senator. Hundert changes greatly from being a one-dimensional character, to a complex character. In “The Palace Thief” by Ethan Canin, Hundert reveals himself as a complex character that contradicts his former self by being moral,

Hundert introduces himself as moral as he is “armed with scruples and an education” (p.161); he has morals that discipline will fix their indolence, “their boorishness with philosophy, and the arrogance of their stations with the history of great men before them” (p.155). He feels as if he has morals to educate his class and he could teach these morals he has. Hundert explains that he is loyal to St. Benedicts and teaching by stating, “but I loved that school. I gave service there to the minds of three generations of boys” (p.155). Hundert has a great amount of disliking towards Sedgewick Bell because he had thought that Sedgwick was a good-for-nothing by stating, “He was a poor student and on his first exam he could not even tell who it was… although an average wood-beetle in the floor of my classroom and had done so with ease” (p.159). In the introduction of Hundert he is thought to be a one dimensional character, until later on, Hundert is thought to be a complex character because he had contradicted himself many

Hundert is a cheater because he had “broke one of the cardinal rules of teaching” (p.165). The cardinal rules of teaching is to be truthful and not give a grade that a student had not deserved, contradicting himself to when he introduced himself of being moral and loyal. Hundert becomes more generous towards Sedgewick Bell by giving “him an A on a quiz on which he had earned only a B” (p.165), contradicting himself to when he had a disliking towards Sedgewick, yet he had mostly given him an A because Hundert was proud that Sedgewick is doing better and had secretly wanted to prove the Senator wrong, that he was not just merely a teacher. Hundert is more regretful than before because he states, “This was when I made my first mistake” (p.165), referring to, “it was at this moment that I realized he was cheating” (p.168), this contradicts himself because he was regretful before, but now he is even more regretful because of his mistakes and actions he had made. Hundert contradicts himself as Canin develops the character