Thursday, June 16, 2016

What made people in the bank think that Leacock was an invalid millionaire?

This incident, as Leacock describes it, must have looked more than a little irregular if viewed from an outside perspective. He asks to see the manager in private, suggesting himself to be a person of some significance to the bank, while he also (in his general anxiety) finds himself struggling with some of the most basic tasks of banking. One can expect this behavior to draw a fair amount of attention (and speculation) from the bank's other customers.
That being said, we don't actually know whether the other people in the bank believe him to be an "invalid millionaire" (of if they're really thinking all that deeply about him at all). When the bank manager presumes he is a Pinkerton, we have confirmation of that assumption, because the bank manager says it out loud. In the case of the other people in the bank, however, all we really have is the speculation of Leacock's narrator, who has already been established as an overly anxious, emotionally overwhelmed individual who is very much out of his comfort zone.
He sees the others in the bank and draws assumptions as to the impression he must be making, but we only see his perspective on this experience, not the perspective of anyone else in the bank.


Leacock's always very nervous whenever he visits a bank. So much so that he makes a number of blunders, such as wandering into a safe and writing "fifty-six" instead of "six" on the check. His nervous behavior and bumbling mistakes give the impression that he's some sort of eccentric millionaire. Leacock's not a rich man by any means; his salary's just been raised to the princely sum of $50 a month. But because he wants to deposit every last penny in his bank account, and because he asks to speak to the manager personally, he conveys the impression that he's a VIP client. As Leacock's such a fish out of water in a bank, he also gives the impression of being some kind of invalid who needs assistance. That explains why a member of staff gives him a checkbook and tells him how to use it.

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