Caged

Intro

Hi there. Today I’ll be talking about the story called Caged by Lloyd Eric Reeve. This story is about one shopkeeper who owned a pet store, and sold cats, dogs, prescribed remedies and so forth. One day he met some strange customer who told him that he want something in the cage, and he chose the birds: a pair of doves. They cost $5.50. A stranger said that he didn’t has enough money, just 5 dollars. Later on he told him about his life on hard labor, for 50 cents per year. He lived that way for ten years.

Shopkeeper decided that if he would sell the doves to stranger even for 5 dollars, he would have a little profit so he did it. Stranger took the cage, went out and let the birds go.

Two sides of the story

I think we have two sides here. On the one hand - a shopkeeper, mercantile, greedy man hypocrate who was courteous and smiled even if he didn’t want it. He didn’t hear a noise from the birds. I think he even regretted the birds became free, I’m sure he would try to catch them if he could.

On the other hand, the customer who bought the birds on his last money to let they go. He went through a lot, he had his hard times when he was on the hard labor. He loved the feeling of freedom and wanted to give that feeling to somebody else, and made it with a pitiful few dollars which reminded him his prison. He released the birds from the cage and his soul from the hard labor. Shopkeeper could never understand why did he did that because he probably never felt that feeling.