The Man With the Progressively Large Hats

Short story about a man with progressively large hats.

 One day, in the small city of Umbridge-Upon-Trine, a young man was walking through the busy streets of the market, taking in the sights and smells of the stalls. It was a hot, sunny day, and the market was bustling with life.

The young man was standing at a modest stall, specialising in all sorts of delightful trinkets and peculiarities, and admiring the wares on offer. He noticed a beautiful hat with a large brim for sale, and questioned the vendor as to the price and make of the item.

Just as he was considering going ahead with the purchase, he felt a tap on his shoulder from behind. He turned around with a start, and saw another young man wearing a small cap, which he tipped towards our protagonist by way of formal greeting.

"Excuse me," the stranger began, "but I couldn't help noticing you eyeing up that hat there... you see, I am a collector, and would be much obliged if you would allow me to purchase this one that you are most infatuated by."

The first young man politely consented, and they continued their conversation, becoming fast friends. They promptly arranged to meet agin, and after the new friend had said his goodbyes and thanked the vendor, he left with his hat, leaving the first young man to continue wandering the stalls.

Now, what our young man could not have guessed, and what would have surely never crossed his small mind, was that his new friend was a trickster, and a player of silly games. For when they met again at the arranged time and place, he noticed that the second young man was wearing a different hat, slightly larger in proportion to the first. He thought nothing of it at the time, and he very much liked his new company, with whom he drank merrily into the night, exchanging stories and cavorting over this, that, and the other.

Things continued in this manner, with the two meeting up several times more, each time the second young man's hats becoming taller and wider, with the consequence that on their eighth meeting, his hat was so big, he had to adjust it several times during conversation to keep it from falling off his head.

All this was quite perplexing to the first young man, who was a very ordinary and well-to-do individual, and nothing made him tremble more than unorthodox behavior.

But each time they met, he refused to mention that anything was the matter, pretending that nothing was amiss, and acting as though he were blind to the obscenely huge hats that his friend adorned. All this amused the second young man terribly, although he refused to give this away, acting just as nonchalant about the whole ordeal.

On one of these occasions, as our first young man was waiting for his friend in their local publican, he heard a commotion by the door and looked up to get a view of all the fuss. There he saw his friend, wearing the widest-brimmed hat you can imagine, which was causing the locals to curse and chide him as it smacked them one by one on his way over to the table.

The scene stirred a deep anger in the first young man, who stood up and started to shout at the second, telling him that if this was his idea of a joke, it wasn't funny. After rebuking his acquaintance in this fashion, he stormed out of the pub and did not return for some time.

After several weeks had passed, he found himself hurrying home from work under a stormy sky, passing by the pub on his way. He decided there would be no harm in popping in for a quick pint, as the rain was terribly cold and this would be an excellent opportunity for respite.

He stayed a while, discussing many subjects with the bartender and the other locals, before the rain subsided and it was time to continue on his way. He bid them goodnight and left, glad to have had an appropriately orthodox evening, and glad also that he had not seen hide nor hair of his old companion.

But what he had neglected to notice, as he passed through the doors of the pub onto the damp streets, was the second young man sat alone in a dark corner of the room with his drink, looking very despondent and upset, and wearing the smallest hat you could possibly imagine...

Reviews

[Nigel Newman]

Hi. I'm with Emmajoy on the first and other/second man observation. It sort of gets in the way a bit. You could give them made-up names Mr No-hat and Mr Hat. I also agree with her that it's a fascinating tale that invites the reader to speculate about the significance of the changing hat size and the mental state of their wearer.

If you look at any other comments I've made for other folk you'll note that I generally like clarity of meaning and intent and will often comment upon unintended ambiguity. Well, you sail through my clarity filter, but I'm surprised to find you've triggered a competing concern, i.e. brevity vs wood for the trees. I think you write very clearly but there's a lot of embroidery without much happening. It's rare that I say this, but I think the story might benefit from considering the old adage 'less is more'. Ironic that I should take so many words to say this!
Don't misunderstand me - I enjoyed this and it made me smile. But like Emmajoy I think it could be made even stronger.

BRs Nigel

[EverythingCoconut]

Thanks for the review Nigel,

I have had people say the same about my writing in the past, and the prose is often accentuated a little too much haha

I put the story up without making any edits, so after reading yours and Emmajoy's reviews, I'll make a note to go over the story and refine it, will most likely change the names as well.

V. constructive and thanks for enjoying it, glad it made you smile as well!

[JPDonelan]

An interesting read that had a nice bit of humor in the form of the second character's buffoonery. There were some issues, including those noted by emmajoy and nigel. I'll mention some below and try to explain my position/where I am coming from in my observation. You are free to do with any of it as you will and I am more than willing to discuss them with you.

Sixth paragraph: you can probably drop "and the other" from the last sentence and just put an "and" between "this" and "that." Little meaning would be lost and the sentence wouldn't drag on longer than needed.

I can agree with what emmajoy said about character reference. You may be able to employ more pronouns (though be careful should you, or you may litter your work with a litany of them far too often). I would suggest looking at character description should you want to stray from assigning names. For example, you note the second/other man as a "trickster." There is a referencing you could work in after it had been established by the narrator. Physical characteristics also work well (hair style/color, eyes, facial structure, etc.), assuming there is adequate/defining difference.

From what I can see, you may overuse the word "was." While it is a fine word and can carry many a sentence, I can see two problems with it as used in this piece. The first is, and lesser of the two, is how it becomes noticeable and can distract from the rest of the story.
The second, and more important, is that the word is weakening your writing. In particular, by shaping your sentences around the word you are padding the word count and drawing out your sentences. Instances of "was '-ing word'" are numerous, when most of such instances could be reduced to a single word (example (third sentence): "The young man was standing..." becomes "The young man stood...").

A quick note on adverbs, specifically their use. To start, I don't decry the use and find suggestions to be rid of them altogether short-sighted. That said, make certain that the adverb-verb construction serves you best when you use them. One particular case, the sentence (portion) "as the rain was terribly cold..." is a prime choice for redetermining word choice. The word "frigid" would suffice in place of "terribly cold." Alternatively, you could reassess the entire "was terribly cold" construction and change it. An example would be "and the rain numbed him (through/raw)..."
There are a number of ways to write any given sentence, and deciding upon one can be time consuming and even frustrating.

One final point for me to touch on has to do with your sentence constructions. I see you employ complex sentences for the majority of the piece, and some get fairly lengthy. Part of me really appreciates that the piece isn't written entirely in short, non-complex sentences, but some (increased) variety would've been nice.
A reader's eyes might tire of reading similar sentence structures one after another, so variation can provide them a reprieve. Additionally, changing the sentence structure from complex to non-complex can highlight what the different sentence says (sentence fragments, discouraged in more academic writing, can serve the same function in fiction as long as not over used).

Overall, I enjoyed the piece and it read fairly well. Keep it up.

[EverythingCoconut]

Hi JPDonelan,

Thank you for the review, i found this very constructive as there's a lot of advice here that's given me things to think about editing. I posted the story without making any changes, so there's a lot of stuff that needs going over. I'll be sure to come back to this review and go over the points you mentioned.

Glad you enjoyed the story, many thanks :)

[emmajoy]

'Things continued in this manner, with the two meeting up several times more, each time the second young man's hats becoming.. .. '

This has the makings of such a fine and unusual story. The hat theme is certainly mysterious. Readers will want to know more. And that leads to the dark finish of the second man, sitting alone.. ... etc. Interesting!

That said, your story needs editing, eg. you keep using the words, 'the first young man' and 'the second/other young man' - why don't they have name, etc?!

Please re.think about this very original story - it really could be first.class!

[EverythingCoconut]

thank you so much! it was only intended to be a very short story, my friend gave me the idea with a joke he made. I thought about giving them names but i decided to keep the "first" and "second" young man as their titles, although it might seem to be said a lil too often. Anyway thanks so much for the review I appreciate the constructive criticism as well. I'm glad you liked it :)