Three Men in a Boat is a satirical piece of Victorian literature written by Jerome K. Jerome about a boating trip. It includes many hilarious anecdotes and plenty of entertaining stories. There are some particularly funny stories, and the one I like most of all is the narrator’s recount of his Uncle Podger’s attempt at fixing up a picture and putting it up onto the wall. This story talks about Uncle Podger, as he takes a newly arrived picture and requires everyone to help get all the supplies, such as sending someone for nails, sending someone to tell them what nails to get, sending someone to get a hammer and other tools, then finally being ready. In the process of lifting the picture and its frame, Uncle Podger accidently drops it, breaks the glass, and in attempting to save it, cuts himself. Then, he cannot get his handkerchief because it is in his coat, and he cannot find his coat. This causes such a row as everyone is looking, and finally Uncle Podger realizes that he’s been sitting on it all the time. Then, five people have to help lift it and hold the nails. But when it’s about to go in, they lose the nail, and after finding it, they lose the hammer, and after finding that, they lose sight of the mark on the wall, and so eventually take multiple hours, and after multiple injuries and damage to the wall, the picture would be up and very crooked. This story teaches that sometimes it’s better to be helpful instead of trying to be the leader.
When people are attempting a simple task, in trying to be the most pivotal part they can mess up and completely and utterly fail, here it is important to be honest and admit it, instead of being vain and saying, “Oh I meant to do that.” When doing something simple such as drawing a sign or hanging up a picture, if you make everything complicated, it would become much harder and no one the better. In Three Men in a Boat, Uncle Podger holds the picture up, but he drops it. Then, instead of focusing on the simple problem, he tries to be the hero and save the glass, but ends up cutting himself, and completely distracting the rest of the household in the process. Instead of doing this, Uncle Podger should have said, “All you go on without me, I’ll go fetch my handkerchief.” But he didn’t, and created many problems that were detrimental to everyone. Helping others as a whole is better than simply trying to be the best and do things alone, sacrifices can be necessary in order to complete tasks quickly and efficiently. When we try to do things, it’s important we do them in the simplest way so we can quickly complete them instead of complicating the situation.
Sometimes, instead of being the leader, we should try to help out equally and let everyone do what they're best at. When we try to command others and force them to do trivial things, we end up slowing the process of progress instead of helping everyone complete tasks efficiently. In Three Men in a Boat, Uncle Podger made everyone do simple tasks such as getting a hammer and grabbing some nails and even simply sending someone to tell another person what size nails to get. This impeded their ability to put up the picture, and made everyone annoyed. Group morale was low. Uncle Podger lazed around and was just waiting for everyone else to set him up to be the person who put up the picture. He should have tried saying, “Okay, I’ll get the picture, and you can get the hammer. We should be good.” Then he could have finished quickly. But instead, he chose the path of delegating meaningless tasks. We should try thinking about the most important part, the entire group, instead of simply annoying everyone and harming their ability to work. We always should have to remember to work as hard as everyone else when we’re leading the place.
Getting things done in one try is a good goal to try to attempt for, and achieving it is not particularly hard. We should always try to avoid repetition, shun redundancy, eschew reiteration, and resist recapitulation. Doing so can make life so much easier and make us more capable of completing tasks. In Three Men in a Boat, Uncle Podger did things very inefficiently, by having to do things over and over because he was too selfish and vain to let others do things that he wasn’t skilled at. He insisted on being the one person to hold everything and nail the picture in, so he messed up and dropped it, cracking the frame eventually. He had to repeatedly do random things in his attempt to progress, but ended up taking much longer and wrecking the house in the process. Once he completed it, he thought he did a great job, despite the long hours everyone had had to work in order to simply finish an easy job. When we finish things in one try, everyone leaves happy and satisfied with the amount of time and energy squandered for the task, instead of wasting a day of our lives trying to complete mundane challenges. We always should try to remember that working together can help us finish things in a single attempt and to easily succeed.
Three Men in a Boat, written by Jerome K. Jerome, is a fantastic story that includes many amusing anecdotes, and out of these, my very favorite is the one about Uncle Podger attempting to hang up a picture. He spends quite a long time doing something that is very easy, but instead manages to stress out the entire family while he is working. This particular story teaches many important lessons, such as how we must work as a team instead of trying to act important, we should not always try to be the leader except when it is in something we are talented at, and that we should always avoid repeating tasks and simply complete it in one try. It teaches us these powerful themes in a funny and entertaining manner, using many jokes and a simple amusing plotline in order to generate cheer. That is why out of all the entertaining stories in Three Men in a Boat, I believe the one best written is the one about Uncle Podger’s exploits.
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