The story that my found poem is based on is Lather and Nothing Else by Hernando Tellez. The setting of the story is presumably the ten-year civil war known as “La Violencia“, resulting in horrific violence due to the political conflict between the Columbian Conservative Party and the Columbian Liberal Party. My poem shows the internal conflict (person vs. self) that the protagonist, a barber and secretly a revolutionary, struggles with. A man walks into his shop, who he recognizes as a captain named Torres who killed or mutilated many of the barber’s allies. This makes him the antagonist, in the sense that he is what the barber struggles with other than himself. While the barber gives Torres a shave, he agonizes over whether or not to kill him.

The conflict is internal because the barber is struggling with whether or not to make a difficult decision. In the rising action of the story, he weighs his reasons for both sides of the argument. On one hand, Torres killed or mutilated many of the barber’s allies. If he let him go unharmed, he would surely continue his attacks on them, as evidenced by this quote: “How many of ours had he sent to their death? How many had he mutilated? … it was going to be very difficult to explain how it was that I had him in my hands and then let him go in peace, alive, clean-shaven.” On the other hand, killing Torres would only lead to someone else taking over his role, and the cycle of violence would continue, as evidenced by this quote. “What is to be gained by it? Nothing. Others and still others keep coming, and the first kill the second, and then these kill the next, and so on until everything becomes a sea of blood.” He knows that he would be celebrated by some but condemned by others for murdering Torres while he was off-duty and defenseless. In the resolution, the barber decides not to kill Torres. He finishes the shave, having done his work honorably. Even though he’s an enemy of Torres and views him as murderous and brutal, he’s “a conscientious barber, and proud of the preciseness of[his] profession.” He doesn’t want to become a murderer like him, wanting to stain his hands with “just lather, and nothing else.”

My poem shows this concept by highlighting words that show the barber’s internal conflict, such as “it would be so easy”, “He deserves it. Or does he?”, and “What is to be gained by it?” The artwork I drew represents the barber’s two choices: violence or peace, blood or lather. The barber’s hand is holding the razor that he used for Torres’s shave. It’s covered in blood that drips down in a small stream (as he imagines it). The blood transitions to bubbles (or lather), showing the barber’s transition from violent thoughts to peaceful ones.

Did you hear about the guy who was almost murdered in a barbershop? He said it was a “close shave”.