Lather And Nothing Else Analysis

In Between the Lines

Stories can bring a reader into the story or they can bore the reader to sleep. Authors use different techniques to keep the reader interested. The short story Lather and Nothing Else by Hernando Tellez is a great of example of this. In the story, the author keeps the reader engaged and in suspense throughout the story with his choice of words, and by using literary devices such as metaphors and irony. The author uses words in this story strategically, to keep the reader focused. An example of a word he uses is, “He is a tranquil man,” He’s talking about Captain Torres and he uses the word ‘tranquil’. He could’ve used calm or quiet, but he used tranquil, which sounds more interesting. Another example of this, “But the …show more content…
In the end the whole story is basically an example if irony. There’s two type of irony used in this short story Dramatic Irony and Situational Irony. First up dramatic irony, throughout the story we knew that the barber was actually with the rebels that Captain Torres was killing. We thought that Captain Torres had no idea who he was, but in the end we found out that he did, “They told me you would kill me, I came to find out if it was true.” So it turns out it wasn’t actually dramatic irony. It was in the beginning but not in the end, so you could say it was false dramatic irony. The other type of irony was situational irony, once again we thought he had no clue who the barber was, but in the end he says, “They told me you would kill me. I came to find out if it was true. But it’s not easy to kill. I know what I’m talking about.” So in the end of the story the opposite of what we thought would happen happened. He knew exactly who he was and that could’ve killed him. Irony was one of the most effective literary devices used in this short story. In conclusion the story Lather and Nothing Else was a very well written piece. The author, Hernando Tellez, used multiple techniques to keep the reader wrapped up and anxious during the story. Some of the techniques he used were his choice of words, and his use of literary devices such as metaphors, simile and most importantly irony. Writing literature is like a life or death situation, it can be breath-taking or it can be