Lather or Blood

Lather or Blood
An essay on Hernando Tellez’s “Just Lather, That’s All” “Just Lather, That’s All” is a short story that presents samples of many different conflicts. What is the conflict? What is the meaning of it? “Just Lather, That’s All” tends to set confliction in the minds of its readers. “The day he ordered the whole town to file into the patio of the school to see the four rebels hanging there, I came face to face with him for an instance. But the sight of the mutilated bodies kept me from noticing the face of the man who had directed it all, the face I was about to take into my hands,” said the barber. This quote shows the barber’s realization and emotion over the situation. “On the other hand I, with his razor in my hands, stroking and restroking his skin, trying to keep blood from oozing from these pores, can’t even think clearly. Curse him for coming, because I’m a revolutionary and not a murderer. And how easy it would be to kill him. And he deserves it. Does he? No! No one deserves to have someone else make the sacrifice of becoming a murderer. What do you gain by it? Nothing,” he thinks. This shows precisely the confliction and confusion of the barber’s emotions on the subject of murder. Hernando Tellez used imagery to express some of the mood in the story. “I would have to close the door, and the blood would keep inching on the floor, warm, ineradicable, uncontainable, until it reached the street, like a little scarlet stream,” plotted the barber. This serves as an example of Tellez’s visual imagery.”Just Lather, That’s All” also provides auditory imagery such as, “ The razor rasped along, making its customary sound as fluffs of lather mixed with bits of hair gathered along the blade.” This last quote is one of the story’s examples of tactile imagery to express and add to the reader’s conflicted perception of this story. “Now his chin had been stroked clean and smooth. The man sat up