Resumo de The Trouble With Harry

I would like to introduce to you a book which has not received the attention that is its due.It is The Trouble with Harry written by the British novelist, Jack Trevor Story. Story was a versatile writer who spanned the supposed divide between pulp entertainment and literary endeavour, as well as the one between the conservative humour magazine Punch and the radical journal of speculative fiction New Worlds. The book is one of the masterpieces of black humour ever written.The book attained more popularity from the film adaptation by Alfred Hitchcock in 1955.Alfred Hitchcock seems to have identified the genius behind the book and the result was a masterpiece.One of the strangest stories ever told , it is about a corpse that would not lay buried.
When the story begins it is a young child, who first finds the body. As the child runs off to get help the audience is led to believe that this movie will be another whodunit suspense mystery movie. But it is when the second character comes upon the body that the mood starts to change. An old man, who is out practising shooting with his rifle, thinks that he accidentally killed the man. In a panic, he is about to drag the body off by the legs into the bushes when a neighbour woman happens by, and asks what he is doing. The audience thinks that she will act horrified by the situation and panic, but instead, she acknowledges the body, and then turns the conversation to the old man''s health, and she invites him over for tea and muffins later in the day.The macabre effect of the story comes from the casual manner in which the characters treat death
Many a times in the story we are stunned at the way the writer makes them speak, especially the women characters.The woman when she hears that the man is dead, she kicks the body to make sure if he is really dead. With each passing character that finds the body, the comedy starts to grow. When the young boy brings his mother to look at the body, we discovers that she was married to the deceased man for a few days, and is not unhappy that he is dead. Another character happens by, and, noticing the man''s brand new shoes, takes them off the body and puts them on his own feet. And another character, engrossed in a book he is reading out loud, stumbles on the body three times, and without noticing, gets up, and keeps walking without taking his eyes off the book or losing his place. In the end, the doctor who stumbled on the body
and says that the body must be examined. When the residents find out that Harry died of natural causes they happily bury him again and continue with their quiet little lives.

Alfred Hitchcock is one of the very few directors who made use of the effects of Black humour in his films. As said before The Trouble with Harry (1950), which is generally regarded as a less fruitful attempt by Hitchcock. In fact it is an underrated masterpiece. In 1950s Hitchcock was in the top of his form when he produced films with, primarily, audience in his mind. However The Trouble with Harry came out of Hitchcock?s deep interest in the treatment of the story.
The story seems to take place in world where death and all its associations are matters of little importance. But we know that in our world it is not so. We can?t joke in presence of death. That makes it chilling to see people deal with Harry as they go on interring and disinterring him and having a good time doing it. Hitchcock was very much interested in jack Trevor Story?s style of presenting dangers and horrors in an unlikely atmosphere, which he illustrates as ?the murder by brook?. Thus in marvelous autumn of Vermont the last thing we think of is a corpse and there it is. The film often resemble an absurd drama when the film goes on rendering various people?s responses at the dead body, like Dr.Greenbowl stumbling over it and apologizing, and the town tramp stealingshoes of Harry.
Important Books by Jack Trevor Story.
Novels:
The Trouble With Harry (1949)
Protection For A Lady (1950)
Green to Pagan Street (1952)
The Trouble With Trudy (1955)
Murder On My Mind (1955)
The Money Goes Round and Round (1958)
Mix Me A Person (1961)
Man Pinches Bottom (1962)
Live Now Pay Later (1963)
Something For Nothing (1963)
The Urban District Lover (1964)
Autobiography: Dwarf goes to Oxford 1987

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