The Semiotic Square in the Cop and the Anthem The Cop and the Anthem is one of the best stories about the crisis of human nature, written by O.Henry (W.B. Zhao 67). O.Henry is a great master of the art of fiction and his work aimed at soothing injured minor person in the world, are known as “smiling with tears”, or “humorous Encyclopedia on people’s life” in the United States at his time (Q.G. Wang 151). Through telling a story about Soapy who is a poor, unemployed and homeless outcast who commits all kinds of crimes intestinally in order to get into the prison in an island, which is an ideal place for him to live in, the Cop and the Anthem condemns the injustice of the society toward the underprivileged, revealing the strong contrast between the material and spiritual civilization as well as political civilization (W.Y. Wang 234). The literature review addresses the analysis of characters in the Cop and the Anthem.
2.1. The character of Soapy
Soapy, a street loafer, jobless, homeless and penniless, lived in extreme poverty and misery. According to W.Y. Wang, Soapy is not a devil; he has positive aspects of his character. Instead of committing a serious crime such as murder or robbery, he chose to eat without paying for money, damage the show window, molest the woman, disturb the public security and steal a tiny unimportant thing like an umbrella, which is not a serious crime but enough to satisfy his desire for the island. However, in such a bad circumstance, Soapy did not lose all his respect (Q.S. Wang and F. Wang 194). To Soapy, “law is more benign than philanthropy” (Henry 78), so “it is better to be a guest of the law” (Henry 78). This is Soapy’s essential understanding of the so-called charity affairs: a mental and soul insult to people of no social protection in charity’s name (Q.S. Wang and F. Wang 194). In addition, Soapy also has a positive attitude toward his life (Q.G. Wang 153). In Soapy’s eyes, “A dead leaf ...Jack Frost’s card and ...the north wind, the male servant of all outdoors...” (Henry 77). We can not only see the poverty and comedown of Soapy, but also a little positive attitude toward the hardly life. Zhang, however, claimed that Soapy is a loafer who can earn his own living but refuse to do so. He cannot threaten to the social order and social security,
but people like him will damage the general mood of the society. And he thinks that it is religion that can solve this problem. And we can notice that Soapy does be a religious young man from “his neat black, ready-tied four-in-hand had been presented to him by a lady missionary on Thanksgiving Day” (Henry 81). When Soapy passed away from the church and heard the anthem, he, frustrated in his unsuccessful attempts and moved by the anthem, underwent a sudden and wonderful change in soul and made up his mind to begin a new life, from which, we can see the mysterious mighty of religion, which can return the prodigal son (He 7). Nevertheless, religion is all in all of spirit, which gradually disappears in the violence of the law. So Soapy was arrested and sent to prison with no reasons and the renascence of Soapy is just the nine day’s wonder.
2.2. The character of policemen
Policemen are also main characters in this story. According to Chen and Wu, the policeman was representative of America’s state machine and could manipulate the poor at will and was capable of molding the weak into any desirable shapes, but each one has his own personality and behaves differently in different circumstances. The first policeman, who thinks destroyer must be the runner, is irritable and subjectively confident, which reflects the silly of the governing class. The second policeman, who saw what happened on Soapy, was just smiling and doing nothing, which shows that he is a snobbish man. The fourth policeman was a self-righteous person and did whatever he is told to do. The fifth one was slavish who thought it was more important to help a rich lady. All these portray the silly of the policemen (Q.S. Wang and F. Wang 194). They never think about the deep reasons of things happened and don’t bear the responsibility of maintaining social order and protecting people’s safety, which to some extent a sarcastic to the unjust of law, which can be best proved by the police in the end who arrested Soapy with no reasons. From all those police, there was no law at all in this society and no distinction between right and wrong, good and evil (Chen and Wu 70-71). Those who made offences or committed crimes could be at large without punishment, while those who did nothing wrong or who were good citizens always ran the risks of falling into clutches of the law.
2.3. The semiotic square in the Cop and the Anthem
The scholars in the world have analyzed the characters in the Cop and the Anthem from different aspects. This essay, based on all the researches, will use the semiotic square of Gremials to reanalyze the relations between the characters. The definition of the semiotic square is quoted from Semiotics and Interpretation of Robert as follows:
The semiotic square is designed to be both a conceptual
network and a visual representation of this network, usually
depicted in the form of a "square" (which actually looks like a
rectangle). The semiotic square may be defined as the logical
articulation of a given opposition. The Semiotic Square is
formed by an initial binary relationship between two contrary
signs. S1 is considered to be the assertion/positive element and
S2 is the negation/negative element in the binary pair: ~S1 is
considered to be the complex term, and ~S2 is the neutral term.
This is where the principle of difference is brought into play:
every element in a system is defined by its differences from the
other elements. The ~S1 element combines aspects of S1 and S2
and is also contradictory to S1. The ~S2 element contains
aspects of neither S1 nor S2.
S1 S2
~S2 ~S1
Using the semiotic square, we can find that all the characters are the logical articulation with symbolic meanings. Soapy has a desire for going to the prison due to the coming winter, while the police who woke for the government can satisfy Soapy’s desire which means sending him to the prison with no reasons and cannot meet his
desire either just like the first five policemen, which has the meaning of “anti-desire”. And those people, including the head waiter in the luxuriously restaurant, a man running to catch a car, the waiter and a guy named Con in the restaurant of no great pretensions, the prostitute and the man whose umbrella was stolen by Soapy, all obstruct Soapy’s desire, making him unable to go to the prison, so they represent “not-desire”. And the last police who sent Soapy to the prison is contradicted with those five policemen, which is “not-anti-desire”. With the development of the story, all those constitute the opposition and contradiction of the semiotic square, which means all the contradiction between Soapy and police as well as those people before being arrested until he does go to the prison, forming a complete semiotic square, which is as follows:
Soapy The first five police
Those people
As to the hero Soapy, we can also use the semiotic square to analyze his mental development. Soapy is a jobless and homeless loafer. In order to go to the prison as a result of winter, he commits crimes to satisfy his desire, which means he has something to do. That is opposed to his identity of being a loafer, which is “anti-loafer”. From the story, we know that Soapy was a man “whose life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars” (Henry 83). That indicates that the man he was is not a loafer. Moved by the anthem, he determined to sever all connections with his past life and find a job and, which is a call from his soul. Though he doesn’t have the chance to realize this, he does have the thought to become a real human being. From that way, we can say he has his human nature back. With the semiotic square, we can clearly understand the
development of the character Soapy. The semiotic square is as follows:
Soapy—a loafer Soapy—a criminal
Soapy—being
Soapy—a young ambitious man
Through the semiotic square, this essay reanalyzes the characters of the Cop and the Anthem. The purpose is to help people better understand the relations between the characters and the values of this story to some extent. This short story is greatly acclaimed and become classic story because of the author’s delicate description of the characters and the criticism of the inequitable society.
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