Analysis - Art for Heart's Sake
.docxThe story "Art for Heart's Sake" was written by Reuben Lucius Goldberg (1883-1970), an American sculptor, cartoonist and writer. His best works include “Is There a Doctor in the House?” (1929), “Rube Goldberg’s Guide to Europe” (1954) and “I Made My Bed” (1960).
The story under analysis is uncomplicated in its essence. Mr. Ellsworth is in hospital after suffering from heart attack, which was caused by the purchase of a railroad. He does not want to fulfil his doctor's prescriptions. Then Doctor Caswell decides to engage him in drawing and hires a young man for teaching him. Mr. Ellsworth is encouraged, he draws things, but does it bad, and asks about museums and galleries. One day he decides to exhibit one of his drawings in the gallery. To everybody's surprise, the drawing gets the first prize, because Mr. Ellsworth has bought the gallery.
What does this story tell us about? It comprises a number of ideas. First of all, the author, in a witty and humorous way, wants to show us how a proverb "The leopard cannot change its spots" works. Collins P. Ellsworth likes buying expensive things, and nothing could prove him wrong — we can see that throughout the whole story. Surely, there are more ideas in the text. For example, the author speaks about money, how easily somebody (namely, Mr. Ellsworth) can spend it and how hard others (Frank Swain, respectively) have to work to get it. One of the other possible ideas can be the idea of art that cannot be bought. Mr. Ellsworth indeed bought the gallery, but still there were students who laughed at his drawing. Despite all these ideas being pretty interesting, I will keep to the first mentioned.
In fact, the story has quite an unexpected ending. From the beginning, the reader can see a person who is unhappy with literally everything. His doctor wants to help him and hires an art teacher. The person is being taught drawing and even wants to exhibit his work. The reader expects that at the end, whether Mr. Ellsworth gets a prize or not, but somehow he recovers from his disease and the idea fix of buying everything inappropriate. That is why the outcome of the story leaves some people even disappointed, though it is undoubtedly comical. And that is why this idea worth a closer examination.
What can be said about the characters? The main character is Mr. Ellsworth, “old gentleman … in pretty good shape for a man of seventy-six years”. From his talking to a male nurse, Koppel, we can learn that he is stubborn enough, suspicious and sarcastic (calling Koppel “old pineapple juice”). Besides, he treats people around him with little respect, which we can observe with the help of vocabulary used (slang words “rot”, “bosh”, “poppycock” meaning “nonsense”). He stubbornly rejects to follow the doctor’s advices. We can trace it even in the manner in which Koppel characterizes him, repeating the word “he”: “He won’t take his pineapple juice. He doesn’t want me to read to him. He hates the radio. He doesn’t like anything.” (Here the author uses gradation.) The other characters — Doctor Caswell and Frank Swain — are patient to Mr. Ellsworth, the former is because of being a professional and the latter is because of money he will be paid.
I examine the story from the point of view of humour, and I can say — it is everywhere. The humorous effect if achieved by the author with the help of different means. For example, he efficiently uses metonymy, calling Koppel “old pineapple juice”, characterizing him through the related object, i.e. referring to the beginning of the story where Koppel offers a pineapple juice to Mr. Ellsworth. It should be mentioned that the story is written in 3rd person limited, which also helps to create an unexpected humorous effect, because until the very end the reader has no suspicion of what is going to happen next. The humour of situation can be also observed in these two sentences: “Frank Swain was patient. He needed the five dollars.”
I find this work full of subtle humour and, in spite of this, carrying very important ideas. It is hardly possible to change a man, that is the main idea I see here. The only thing I can do is to agree with it. Almost all of us are those “Ellsworths”, we can be stubborn and sometimes we need to learn how not to be. It can be such stories that will teach us, because laughing at them we laugh at our own vices.