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Bill Driscoll
Ebenezer Dorset is Johnny's father, a wealthy businessman in the town of Summit. Sam describes him as a rich but stingy person who takes advantage of people in distress: “Respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser.” Ebenezer’s coldness and cruelty are also evident in the seeming hunger his son Johnny has for fatherly attention and affection. When Sam and Bill kidnap Johnny and hold him for ransom, Ebenezer displays both his humorous and his calculating sides by refusing to worry about his son’s safety and pay the ransom, but instead cleverly negotiating with Johnny’s captors so that they would pay him money to return his troublesome son. The unusual name Ebenezer evokes the namesake character Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, and that is reinforced by the polite but calculating missives from him “written with a pen in a crabbed hand.” He evokes little sympathy in the reader, perhaps because he is the only one who profits from this sad episode.
Ebenezer Dorset Quotes in The Ransom of Red Chief
The The Ransom of Red Chief quotes below are all either spoken by Ebenezer Dorset or refer to Ebenezer Dorset . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Ransom of Red Chief
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The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser.
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I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid... it ain't human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat.
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I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands.
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We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day.
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When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill's leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.
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Ebenezer Dorset Quotes in The Ransom of Red Chief
The The Ransom of Red Chief quotes below are all either spoken by Ebenezer Dorset or refer to Ebenezer Dorset . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Ransom of Red Chief
Quotes
The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser.
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Explanation and Analysis:
I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid... it ain't human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat.
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I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands.
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We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day.
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When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill's leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.
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