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Wanderhome The Joke-Master Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Healthy, deeply-felt respect for this here Shotgun
The Joke-Master
#1: Feb 4th 2015 at 2:05:37 PM

Okay, so years ago, when I was in... high school I think, I was sitting in an empty English classroom for some reason. Because I was bored, I picked up one of those literature textbooks with a lot of short stories. I ended up reading one that turned out to be very good. It was written by a South American author (I don't remember the name or nationality). The story ran thusly:

The protagonist is a barber in a South American country where some sort of rebellion is going on. The barber is a rebel sympathizer, and supports their insurrection. One day, a leading anti-rebel fighter comes into town. This pro-government partisan has just captured a group of rebels after hunting them through the wilderness for some weeks. After placing the rebels into custody to await their execution, he goes to the barber for a shave.

As the barber prepares the straight razor, he reflects on his rebel sympathies. As he lathers the the man's face and begins to shave, he reflects on how easy it would be to just change the angle of the razor and kill him. The narration describes the barber's dilemma of conscience about whether he should kill the man throughout the shave.

Finally, the shave is finished. The barber couldn't work up the nerve to slit the man's throat. The man stands up, pays, and begins to leave.

Then he turns to the barber and says: "It's not an easy thing to kill a man".

I'm paraphrasing the final quote and may have messed up some of the details, but does anyone know the title of this story or the name of the author?

edited 4th Feb '15 2:06:00 PM by Wanderhome

Wanderhome The Joke-Master Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Healthy, deeply-felt respect for this here Shotgun
The Joke-Master
#3: Feb 4th 2015 at 2:28:38 PM

Thank you kindly. That's been bothering me, when it occurred to me, for years. Though I'm kind of embarrassed that you found it so quickly when I couldn't.

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