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The Fiery Wooing of Mordred - an Analysis (P.G. Wodehouse)

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This short story materializes initially through an introduction describing an occurrence in a classic English pub of a young fellow who decided to drop his cigarette-end into a waste-paper basket, despite the affluence of available ashtrays around. However, it soon becomes apparent that this happening serves only as a prologue and a link to the real story that is to follow. One of the clients, Mr. Mulliner takes the opportunity to tell the other individuals present, some only known to the reader by their drinks, about an account of his nephew: the poet Mordred Mulliner. Mordred had been on a regular visit to his dentist, as he meticulously does every six months, when a lady called Annabelle Sprocket-Sprocket entered while he was reading in …show more content…

Mordred does however not act like someone who had previously been acquainted with a situation like this, not mentioning two separate occurrences. In his past experience, Mordred had resorted to finding help rather than attempting to put out the fire himself. This time around the reason for his previous actions becomes clear, as he serves more as a direct adversary than an ally in fighting the fire. In his attempt to help the other men, he had accomplished in tripping Mr. Guffington and causing Mr. Prosser to be drenched in water, and was embarrassingly relegated to being a spectator in the fire battle. His performance is quite humorous, for this marks the point in the situation were everything goes from bad to worse. Mordred had been the primary cause of the fire, and now he was about to turn it into a catastrophe. We are left with a feeling of sympathy for the poor poet, for he has now lost all chance of success in courting the beautiful Annabelle. The writer comically refers to Mordred's stupidity in starting fires as a specialisation and even a genius. This is pure sarcasm in the highest degree and it serves it's humoristic purposes brilliantly in the story. Nonetheless, it is only later in the story that we realise that these words were chosen with a different function as well. It turns out that a devastating fire was all that Annabelle's parents desired, and in their eyes Mordred's incompetence was in fact an invaluable skill. This ads to the sense of

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