His love for Annabel changes Jimmy, and he adopts the identity of Ralph D. Spencer, an honest shoe salesman. As Ralph, Jimmy finally lives the straight life, wins the heart of Annabel, and gains the respect of her family and the entire town.
Safecracker Jimmy Valentine (who is trying to disguise himself as Ralph Spencer, an honest shoe salesman) has to decide to reveal knowledge from his past lifestyle (cracking safes) in order to save his love's young niece. This would risk exposure, getting caught and going back to jail.
He chooses to open a shoe store because he has had ten months experience working on shoes in prison. His choice of the name Ralph Spencer is purely arbitrary. It could have been any other alias. He sensed that he was getting too well known in his old territory in Indiana and that vicinity.
The fiancée of Ralph D. Spencer, the false identity of career safecracker, Jimmy Valentine, and the daughter of Mr. While he disguised as Ralph, Annabel too falls in love with Jimmy, and she is the very reason he begins to live the straight life as a shoe salesman.
Jimmy Valentine's major conflict is that he must be dishonest about his true identity as a criminal in order to enjoy life as an upright and honest citizen.
What does Ben Price do a year after Jimmy's disappearance? He tracks Jimmy down to Elmore through his letter and arrests him. He gives up the detective business and retires to Elmore.
When Jimmy fell in love with Annabel Adams at first sight, that was the beginning of his reformation. He assumed that Annabel could no longer love him once she had found him out. When he asked for the rose she was wearing, it was a sentimental request. He wanted something to remember her by.
Q. Which character determines the resolution of "A Retrieved Reformation"? The characters have more information about events than the readers.
In "A Retrieved Reformation," the tone is mildly amused and observational.
Resolution. The resolution is the end of the story. It occurs after the CLIMAX. It is when you learn what happens to the characters after the CONFLICT is resolved.
An “eminent” police detective and the antagonist of “A Retrieved Reformation.” Price is portrayed as the epitome of morality and hard work, and he serves as a foil to Jimmy Valentine's criminal lifestyle.
Why does the narrator compare Jimmy Valentine to a phoenix? The comparison to a phoenix is an allusion to a mythological bird that lives for centuries before being consumed in an inferno from which it emerges reborn, resurrected from death to live out its life cycle again and again.
"A Retrieved Reformation" is a short story by American author O. Henry first published in The Cosmopolitan Magazine, April 1903. It describes the events which lead up to the reformation of an ex-convict. The story was adapted into a radio series, Alias Jimmy Valentine, that was broadcast from 1938 to 1939.
In "A Retrieved Reformation," Annabel's father is worried about Agatha because the little girl has just been locked inside a bank safe and might suffocate.
As Jimmy is released from prison, the warden advises him to “brace up” and “make a man of himself,” claiming that Jimmy is “not a bad fellow at heart.” His advice to Jimmy implies that the ticket to the straight life is an honest profession, and through this O.
Jimmy Valentine is pardoned because he has many important friends and connections on the outside. The last sentence of the first paragraph of the story indicates this important fact. When a man with as many friends on the outside as Jimmy Valentine had is received in the “stir” it is hardly worth while to cut his hair.
There would be no chance of another reformation, or of finding another girl like Annabel Adams. Ironically, Jimmy risks everything by rescuing little Agatha from the bank vault, but because he risks everything by exposing his identity as a master safecracker, he is allowed to "retrieve" his reformation.
Answer: Expert Answers info Jimmy went to Elmore because he was looking for a new location from where he could carry on with his safecracking business. Note that Jimmy has a habit of moving out of places where he has already committed a crime, perhaps so he can evade the police.
The look Jimmy shares with Annabel Adams the first time he sees her makes him forget his identity as a burglar. The fact that she is a banker's daughter is an example of situational irony, as it puts Jimmy in close proximity to a safe he could easily rob if his safecracking compulsion were ever to return.
Jimmy's change was triggered by his falling in love at first sight with the beautiful and highly respectable Annabel Adams.
Written in 1903, A Retrieved Reformation takes place in a time before cars, when people traveled by train and by ''livery buggy. '' Though we begin the story in prison with Jimmy, we quickly move into the outside world. Apart from a quick pit stop to his old apartment, most of the action happens in Elmore, Arkansas.
Love as a motivating factor plays a major role in O. Henry's "A Retrieved Reformation." When Jimmy Valentine receives a pardon from his prison sentence for robbery, the warden admonishes Jimmy to reform. "Now, Valentine," said the warden, "you'll go out in the morning.
The theme in a story is its underlying message, or 'big idea. ' In other words, what critical belief about life is the author trying to convey in the writing of a novel, play, short story or poem? This belief, or idea, transcends cultural barriers. It is usually universal in nature.
Jimmy Valentine is a hardened criminal who immediately returns to safecracking when he is released from prison; however, after he unexpectedly falls in love, Jimmy changes his behavior and attitudes and becomes an honest businessman. Stop cracking safes, and live straight."
Identity. The flexibility of Jimmy's identity exhibits the story's thematic preoccupation with not only what identity is but what it can be. To different people, Jimmy is known variously as Jimmy Valentine, Prisoner 9762, Mr. James Valentine, and Ralph D.
The theme of "A Retrieved Reformation" can probably be best expressed with the old adage "Honesty is the best policy." When Jimmy Valentine goes to Elmore, Arkansas, he is only planning to set up a business as a "front" from which he can travel to nearby towns and commit his safecracking jobs.
