Short Fiction · Chapter
Answers to Inquiries explained
A brief, humorous exchange in which a young schoolboy attempts to ask an arithmetic question about grocery prices, only to be cut off and redirected to the advertising manager.
What happens
A brief, humorous exchange in which a young schoolboy attempts to ask an arithmetic question about grocery prices, only to be cut off and redirected to the advertising manager.
Themes in this chapter
Humor and Irony
The chapter uses a playful, ironic tone as the editor dismisses the boy's earnest arithmetic question with a commercial redirect.
Key passages
“Dear Editor : I want to ask a question in arithmetic. I am a school boy and am anxious to know the solution. If my pa, who keeps a grocery on Milam Street, sells four cans of tomatoes for twenty-five cents, and twenty-two pounds of sugar, and one can of extra evaporated apples and three cans of superior California plums, for only— There! There! little boy; that will do. Tell your pa to come around and see the advertising manager, who is quite an arithmetician, and will doubtless work the sum for you at the usual rates.”
A schoolboy writes to the editor seeking help with a math problem about his father's grocery prices, but the editor interrupts him and suggests his father consult the advertising manager instead.
The passage captures the chapter's whimsical satire of commercialism and the intrusion of advertising into everyday life.