Does "The Ransom of Red Chief" qualify as a trickster tale? A tall tale? Both? Neither? Give reasons for your opinion.

A trickster tale would ordinarily end with the trickster succeeding in pulling off his trick. Examples would be "Dusk" by Saki and "The Umbrella Man" by Roald Dahl. "The Ransom of Red Chief" is not a trickster tale. Sam and Bill are pretty straightforward. They aren't trying to trick anybody, at least in this particular instance, although they appear to specialize in conning or tricking people as their customary professions.

"The Ransom of Red Chief" is a funny story but not a "tall tale." A tall tale is based on exaggeration, but O. Henry does not rely on exaggeration in his story. Red Chief is a pretty high-spirited boy, but he has a lot of the typical boy's characteristics.

In Hollywood parlance, "The Ransom of Red Chief" would be called a "busted-caper story." Some crooks plan a crime to make money, but things start going wrong because they didn't plan carefully enough, or else they are incompetent to pull the job off as planned. The movie Fargo is an excellent example of a busted-caper story. John Collier's story "Home for Christmas" is another good example of how one unforeseen detail ruins a murderer's perfect crime.

One of the reasons that criminal behavior is risky is that it is impossible to foresee everything that could go wrong. For example, a man might decide to rob a liquor store because he is desperate for money. He thinks it is just a matter of showing a gun and walking off with a bag of cash. But what if the clerk or store owner resists? If the robber has a gun he is either going to have to use it or else probably get overpowered or arrested. But he was only thinking of committing a robbery. If he pulls the trigger he is committing a murder. Things like this happen all the time.

Sam and Bill call themselves "desperate men." This is to suggest to the boy's father that they might kill his son if he doesn't meet their ransom demand. But if they kill the boy they have become murderers without even collecting any money. These two men run into all sorts of problems they hadn't foreseen because they had no previous experience. The father doesn't much care whether he gets his son back. The boy enjoys the adventure of being kidnapped. He is a wildcat and threatens them with bodily injury or worse. They can't control the boy without using violence, but if they use violence they make their crime even worse. They have no moral authority with the boy as adults because they have lost it by becoming kidnappers. The boy has thereby acquired the upper hand, and so has his father. If they don't kill Red Chief, he can always be a witness against them if and when they get caught. But they are not the kind of men who would kill a child. A kidnapper should be prepared to kill his victim, just as a robber should be prepared to pull the trigger if his intended victim offers resistance.

O. Henry's tale is a comedy, but it contains a serious message. Crime does not pay. Honesty is the best policy.