Foundation first: how Leacock makes us laugh
Extract questions often ask "Which description did you find funniest?" or "Name the device used". Learn these devices before you read the retelling. Every example below is from this story.
| Device | What it means | Example in the story |
|---|---|---|
| Exaggeration (hyperbole) | stretching a fact far beyond what is true | the photographer "crawled into" the camera; the camera is "staggering from the shock" |
| Understatement | saying less than the situation deserves | "I know; I have always known it" |
| Comic misunderstanding | a character takes words the wrong way | "three-quarters full" means plumper to the narrator |
| Mock-scientific language | big, serious words for small things | "natural scientist", "Delphide", "Sulphide" |
| Bathos (anticlimax) | a grand build-up that ends in something small or silly | "sulphide, bromide, oxide, cowhide"; a noble speech that ends in tears |
| Personification | giving human feelings to a thing | the machine staggering from the shock |
| Onomatopoeia | a word that sounds like the thing | "Snick!" |
| Irony | the opposite of what we expect | "Is it me?" — "Yes, it is you." |
Quick check. "Droop the ears a little more" is which device? Answer: an impossible instruction, which is exaggeration. Nobody can droop their ears, and that is the joke.
Reading a scene. Each scene follows the same pattern: the photographer does something strange, the narrator reacts with too much politeness or too much feeling, and the gap between the two is the laugh.
1. In the waiting room
The narrator walks into a photographer's studio and says he wants his photograph taken. The photographer looks at him "without enthusiasm". He is a drooping man in a grey suit, with "the dim eye of a natural scientist" — as if photography were a solemn scientific study and the customer merely a specimen. He tells the narrator, "Sit there, and wait."
The narrator waits an hour. To pass the time he reads magazines — and they are absurdly old: a ladies' magazine from 1912, a girls' magazine from 1902 and an infants' journal from 1888. (2025 specimen Q1(xii).) Sitting there, he begins to feel guilty, as if he had done something unforgivable in disturbing this great man's "scientific pursuits" with a face like his.
2. Into the studio
After an hour the photographer opens the inner door and says, severely, "Come in." The narrator sits on a stool in a beam of sunlight that comes through a sheet of factory cotton hung under a frosted skylight (studios used daylight, softened through cloth).
The photographer rolls a big camera — "a machine" — into the middle of the room and crawls into it from behind. He looks once at the narrator and rushes out again, tearing at the cotton sheet and the window panes with a hooked stick, "apparently frantic for light and air". He crawls back in and pulls a black cloth over himself. He is so quiet under it that the narrator decides he must be praying, and keeps still.
3. "The face is quite wrong"
When the photographer comes out, he looks grave and shakes his head. "The face is quite wrong," he says. The narrator answers meekly, "I know; I have always known it." This is the first big laugh of the story: instead of being offended, the narrator humbly agrees that his face is a mistake.
The photographer sighs that the face would be better "three-quarters full" — a photographer's term for turning the face partly sideways, so that three-quarters of it is visible. The narrator misunderstands it to mean "fuller" or "rounder" and eagerly agrees, glad that the man has "a human side". He starts a little speech about how hard, narrow faces become "wide, large, almost boundless" when they are three-quarters full — but the photographer has stopped listening.
The photographer takes the narrator's head in his hands and twists it sideways. The narrator thinks he means to kiss him, and closes his eyes. But the photographer only twists the face as far as it will go and stands looking at it.
4. A list of instructions
The photographer is still not satisfied. "I don't like the head," he says. Then comes a rapid stream of orders, each more ridiculous than the last:
- "Open the mouth a little" — then at once, "Close it."
- "The ears are bad; droop them a little more."
- "Roll the eyes in under the lids."
- Put the hands on the knees, turn the face a little upward, expand the lungs, hump the neck, contract the waist, and twist the hip up towards the elbow.
And still the face is "a trifle too full". The orders are impossible for any human body to obey — that is the joke.
5. The narrator protests — and the photograph is taken
At last the narrator swings round on the stool. "Stop," he says, with emotion but, he believes, with dignity. He makes a passionate little speech:
"This face is my face. It is not yours, it is mine. I've lived with it for forty years and I know its faults. … But it's my face, the only one I have …"
His voice breaks, but he goes on: such as it is, he has learnt to love it. This is his mouth, not the photographer's; these are his ears, and if the photographer's machine is too narrow — he starts to rise from his seat.
Snick! The photographer has pulled a string. The photograph is taken — at the very moment of the outburst. The narrator imagines the machine still "staggering from the shock". The photographer, pursing his lips in a pleased smile, says he caught the features "just in a moment of animation". The narrator replies bitingly, "So! features, eh? You didn't think I could animate them, I suppose?" He asks to see the picture; the photographer says he must first develop the negative — the narrator should come back on Saturday to see a proof.
6. Saturday: the proof
On Saturday the photographer beckons him in. He seems quieter and graver, and there is "a certain pride in his manner". He unfolds the proof (a trial print) of a large photograph and they both look at it in silence.
"Is it me?" the narrator asks. "Yes," the photographer says quietly, "it is you." (2025 specimen Q4; 2027 specimen Q1(xii).)
The narrator examines it feature by feature, and the photographer explains, with professional satisfaction, what he has done:
| Feature | What the photographer has done |
|---|---|
| eyes | "I've retouched them. They come out splendidly, don't they?" |
| eyebrows | "The eyebrows are removed." A new process, the "Delphide", puts in new ones. |
| hair and forehead | The Delphide has been used to carry the hair away from the brow; he dislikes "the hair low on the skull" and likes to make "a new brow line". |
| mouth | "It's adjusted a little … yours is too low. I found I couldn't use it." |
| ears | They are "a good likeness" — the only feature that looks like the narrator's. But the photographer can "fix that": a process called the "Sulphide" removes the ears entirely. |
7. The outburst
This is too much. The narrator draws himself up, "animating my features to their full extent", and speaks with "a withering scorn":
He came for a photograph that would look like him — something that would show his face "as Heaven gave it to me, humble though the gift may have been". He wanted something his friends might keep after his death, to reconcile them to his loss. That, it seems, is "no longer done". So let the photographer go on with his "brutal work": dip the negative in "sulphide, bromide, oxide, cowhide" — anything he likes; remove the eyes, correct the mouth, adjust the face, restore the lips, reanimate the necktie, reconstruct the waistcoat; coat it with gloss, shade it, emboss it, gild it, till even the photographer admits it is finished. And then — "keep it for yourself and your friends. They may value it. To me it is but a worthless bauble."
The narrator "broke into tears and left". The story ends there: the comic hero, defeated, keeps his self-respect only by walking out.
Reading between the lines
The retelling above gives the events. These notes give the reasons.
- "Without enthusiasm." The photographer is meant to sell a service, yet he greets a customer coldly. This shows he cares about his craft, not about people.
- The hour of waiting. An hour is a long time for a simple photograph. It tells us the photographer thinks his time is more valuable than the customer's. The 1912, 1902 and 1888 magazines make the delay feel even longer.
- "I had done an unwarrantable thing." The narrator, who pays for the service, feels like an intruder. This reversal is the first sign that the narrator is a timid man who apologises for existing.
- Praying under the cloth. A photographer under a black cloth is only focusing. The narrator turns it into a religious scene. Mock-solemn language makes small things look huge.
- "I know; I have always known it." The narrator agrees too fast. He is polite when he should be angry, and that is why the line is a laugh.
- The head twisted and the kiss. The photographer touches him like a doll, and the narrator, who expects a kind word, imagines a kiss. A rough gesture is misread as a tender one.
- Contradictory orders. "Open the mouth a little" and then "Close it" show the photographer does not know what he wants. He has an idea of a face that no real face can match.
- Why the narrator finally speaks. Humble people can be pushed only so far. As the orders pile up ("hump the neck", "twist the hip"), they cross the line from fussy to insulting, and his self-respect wakes up.
- "Snick!" at the moment of protest. The photograph is taken at the very moment the narrator is angriest. The photographer calls it "a moment of animation". He sees only a good picture, not a hurt man.
- Pride on Saturday. The photographer's calm "it is you" is comic and a little frightening. He sincerely thinks he has improved the face, and that blindness is what Leacock laughs at.
- The ears. The ears are the last honest feature in the photograph, and the photographer wants to remove them too. The story ends with the narrator walking out to save the last part of himself.
- "Cowhide." After three chemical words the list slips to leather. The sudden drop makes the narrator's scorn funny instead of heavy.
Worked examples
Example 1 (full extract question, 16 marks). Read the extract and answer the questions.
"To me it is but a worthless bauble."
(In the story the narrator says this after telling the photographer to "keep it for yourself and your friends".)
(i) Who is speaking to whom? What has made the speaker say these words? [3] Model answer. The narrator is speaking to the photographer, in the studio, on Saturday. The photographer has just shown him a proof in which his eyes are retouched, his eyebrows removed and his mouth adjusted, and he has said that the ears will be removed too. The narrator can no longer control his anger.
Why this scores: speaker and listener (1 mark), place and time (½), the cause with two specific changes (1½). The examiners' report says marks are lost on small details, so name them.
(ii) What had the narrator come to the studio for? [3] Model answer. He had come for a photograph that would look like him, one that showed his face "as Heaven gave it to me", however humble the gift. He wanted his friends to keep it after his death so that it would reconcile them to his loss.
Why this scores: the purpose (1 mark), the idea of the natural face (1 mark) and the use of the picture by his friends (1 mark).
(iii) What does he mean by calling the photograph a "worthless bauble"? [3] Model answer. A bauble is a showy ornament with no real value. By calling the picture a bauble, the narrator means that it may look fancy but is useless, because it does not show him. A portrait that does not resemble the sitter cannot do what a portrait is for, so he gives it no worth.
Why this scores: meaning of the word (1 mark), what it means here (1 mark), reason (1 mark).
(iv) Name the processes the narrator mockingly lists. Which word is out of place and why? [3] Model answer. He lists "sulphide, bromide, oxide, cowhide". The first three are chemical words that sound scientific. "Cowhide" is out of place because it is leather, not a chemical. The sudden drop is bathos, and it makes the photographer's science sound silly.
Why this scores: the list (1 mark), the odd word (1 mark), the device named and explained (1 mark).
(v) Do you think the narrator is right to be angry? Give reasons. [4] Model answer. Yes, I think he is right. He was kept waiting for an hour, called "quite wrong", twisted about and given impossible orders. What he got was a picture he could not recognise, and even his ears were to be removed. He only asked to be shown as he is. A man who defends his own face is defending his identity, so the anger is fair, even though his tears make us smile.
Why this scores: a clear opinion (1 mark), two or three insults or events from the story (2 marks) and a link to the theme of identity (1 mark). The examiners want opinions given "with confidence and honesty".
Example 2 (meaning of the line, 3 marks). "I thought he meant to kiss me, and I closed my eyes." Why does the narrator think so? What does it show?
Model answer. The photographer has taken the narrator's head in his hands and turned it sideways. Nobody has touched the shy narrator so closely before, so he misreads a rough, professional action as an affectionate one. It shows how innocent and nervous he is, and it makes the photographer's treatment look even colder.
Why this scores: the cause (1 mark), the misreading (1 mark), what it shows about the narrator (1 mark).
Example 3 (an MCQ with a twist, 1 mark). The narrator thinks that "three-quarters full" means the face will look (a) older (b) thinner (c) plumper and rounder (d) turned to the side.
Solution. (c). The question asks what the narrator thinks, not what the term means. In photography, "three-quarters full" means (d), but the narrator misunderstands it. Section 9 has a pair of questions on the same trap.
Why this scores: reading the question stem carefully. In the exam, write only the letter. The examiners' report says students should not copy the option.
Example 4 (character, 100–150 words). Write a short character sketch of the photographer.
Model answer. The photographer is rude and proud. He greets the narrator "without enthusiasm" and orders him to "Sit there, and wait." He is self-important, because he behaves like a great scientist with "the dim eye of a natural scientist". He is insensitive: he tells the customer that "the face is quite wrong", twists his head and gives impossible orders such as "droop" the ears. He is also obsessed with perfection, for he retouches the eyes, removes the eyebrows and plans to remove the ears. Finally, he is proud and blind: on Saturday he looks at the changed picture with "a certain pride" and says calmly, "it is you". He never listens to the narrator, and that is why Leacock makes him the target of the satire.
Why this scores: four qualities, each in bold and each backed by a quotation or event (about 2 marks each at long-answer level), and a closing line connecting him to the satire.
Doubts cleared
Q. Why does the photographer say "Yes, it is you" if the picture has changed so much? In his mind, the picture is the narrator's face, only improved. That is the irony: he honestly believes the changed face is better than the real one.
Q. Why does the narrator not walk out earlier? He is timid and polite. He keeps apologising to himself ("an unwarrantable thing") and obeys every order until the "hump the neck" instructions push him too far.
Q. What exactly is the "Delphide" or "Sulphide"? They are made-up processes for the photographer's work. The photographer says one puts in new eyebrows and the other removes the ears. You do not need chemistry. In the exam, say they are "invented, scientific-sounding names".
Q. What is a "proof"? A first trial print shown to the customer before the final copy. In 2025 specimen Q4(ii) it was asked directly.
Q. Why does the narrator cry at the end? Because his anger has nowhere to go. He has made a grand speech and it changes nothing. The tears are the comic anticlimax after his noble words.
Mistakes to avoid
- Mixing the order of events. The 2026 paper (Q1(viii)) and the 2025 Improvement paper (Q1(xii)) both asked for the correct sequence of events, so learn the eleven events in Section 5.2 in order.
- Saying the photographer takes the photograph before the narrator protests. It is taken during the protest.
- Forgetting the ears. The only original feature left is the ears, and they are to be removed too. This detail was asked in 2025 specimen Q4(iv).
- Calling the photographer cruel in a deliberate way. He is not cruel on purpose; he is proud and blind to the customer's feelings.
Check yourself
- How long is the narrator kept in the waiting room before he is called into the studio?
- Which feature of the narrator's face is a "good likeness"?
- Name two things the narrator says he wanted the photograph for.
Answers: 1. One hour. 2. His ears. 3. A true likeness of his face "as Heaven gave it to me", and something his friends could keep after his death.