The Strange-Looking Man

The story “The Strange-Looking Man” by Fanny Kemble Johnson, taken from Women’s Writing on the First World War, Agnes Cardinal, Dorothy Goldman and Judith Hattaway, Eds., features in B.Ed. 1^st Year’s General English book (Tribhuvan University). Below is the summary of the story, a fable.

In a war-affected village there are only women left now. A few men who are in the village are the crippled and disfigured men in various ways. These men were taken by the government to fight in the war, but after they were severely wounded making them unable to fight any more, they were sent back to their village. The women in the village have stopped giving birth to the baby, fearing that the sons, when they become big enough to fight, will be taken away by the government to the war and be returned crippled, which will only add more sorrow to the unfortunate mother. However, in the second year of the war a son was born. Now, in the fourth year of the war, he has become 3 years old. He is a playful and mischievous child, who keeps going from house to house teasing and playing with the wounded men. The men also enjoy his company for they have nothing else to engage or entertain themselves with.

One day the boy, while his mother was busy washing clothes, goes towards the hill, higher up along the bank of the mountain-stream, simply out of his curiosity. Beyond the hill, he finds a beautiful pool. On one edge of the pool, he sees a young man naked and about to dive into the pool. Hiding, he watches the young man, as he swims in the pool and finally comes out and begins to wear his clothes. The man looks towards the direction of the boy, and sees him and calls him. Frightened, the boy runs away. Right then, his mother arrives there looking for him. The boy hides behind his mother. The young man is perplexed. He tells the boy’s mother that he hasn’t done anything to frighten the boy. He was just calling him out to give him pennies. The woman explains that her son is frightened seeing him as a strange-looking man for he has never seen any man in the village with a completely-fine body.

This ironic ending satirizes the horrors of war. War can make a strange thing look common, and a common thing look strange. War is destructive and terrific. War is not heroic; it is ugly.