From
Some Policemen and a Moral
G. K.
Chesterton
Points
to remember:
1. Once the writer was freely wandering
in a jungle and was enjoying himself
2. In leisure, he started throwing a
Swedish knife towards a tree trunk
3. Unexpectedly, two policemen appeared
there from somewhere and they arrested him almost
4. They got him entangled in their
complicated and irrelevant questions
5. They accused him of a murder attempt
on a tree
6. The writer introduced himself in
detail saying that he was a poet, a journalist, a writer also
7. To prove, he also recited a self-composed
poem and he also said that he was staying with a famous personality of London
8. Hearing all this, the policemen disappeared
from the scene
9. The writer put some questions before
him as well as before the readers
10. Was the writer really harming the tree,
if so, then, why the policemen not arrested him?
11. Are the poets, journalists and
famous personalities free from law and allowed to harm anything?
12. If the writer was proved to be a
common man, would the policemen leave him free even then?
G. K. Chesterton was
a journalist. He worked in the "Daily News”. Once in holidays, he went to
Yorkshire. He was staying there with a rich and famous person. One day he was
free from work and was sitting in a wood. He had a Swedish knife and was
practicing the style in which people murdered each other in Stevenson's novels.
Unfortunately, he could never hit any tree.
Suddenly two
policemen appeared from somewhere. They accused him of murder-attempt on the
tree and started a detailed interrogation regarding some relevant or irrelevant
matters. The policemen entangled him badly in the snare of their complicated
and irrelevant questions. They asked him who he was.
What the knife was,
why he was throwing it, what was his address, trade, religion, opinion on the
Japanese war, name of his favourite cat and so on. The writer tried to convince
them that he was a journalist and was staying with "Mr. Blank of Ilkely'.
The writer produced an envelope, an unfinished poem and some other documents to
prove his statement.
All these things
impressed the policemen and they left as quickly as they had come. The matter
of his being guilty or not was solved by the fact that he knew some well-to-do
people and was a journalist.
The writer was quite
amazed at his acquittal and release. He asked the policemen why they had
acquitted him when he was guilty of cruelty to a green entity.
He further said that
the policemen had rushed to him as if he was some villain of the Greek
mythology who was trying to spoil a goddess tied to the ground and as if the
huge tree was now shattered into pieces. It was protesting against the cruelty
of a man. His crime could not be dismissed by the fact that he was Chesterton,
a journalist, a well-known person or that he was staying with some wealthy
people.
It made him think
that they might be fairies whose standard and criterion of crime and punishment
was different from the normal human standard. In their domain, it might be a
crime to damage a tree or a blade of grass. In these terms this event could
easily be explained but if the policemen were taken as "real", the
situation again became confusing.
They arrested him
because he was guilty of something so they should have taken him to the police
station for proper proceedings. And if he was not the criminal then why had
they interfered with him and accused him.
This is what the
writer is still unable to understand. He thinks that if there has been a poor
man at his place, who is homeless or who does not know any dignitary, what they
might have done to him. Basically this essay is written to criticize the
practices of policemen who question the innocent but let the criminals loose.
Also Read other Modern Essays of BA,Click BA English Modern Essays
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