The mood of “The Cop and the Anthem” is simultaneously suspenseful and lighthearted. As Soapy jumps from one failed scheme for getting arrested to another, the story becomes something of a comedy of errors, with readers eagerly waiting to see if Soapy will finally be arrested and taken to prison (as he desires). O. Henry deftly balances social commentary with an entertaining and playful mood.
That said, near the end of the story, the mood abruptly shifts, becoming much more serious and emotional. This shift happens as Soapy pauses his scheming to listen to an organ song coming from a church:
The moon was above, lustrous and serene; vehicles and pedestrians were few; sparrows twittered sleepily in the eaves—for a little while the scene might have been a country churchyard. And the anthem that the organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars.
O. Henry’s language here is different from the rest of the story. While the playful parts of the story feature silly hyperboles and ironic interactions, here, O. Henry uses earnest and poetic language to communicate the emotional shift taking place inside Soapy as he reckons with the reality of what he’s lost in life—“mothers and roses and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars.” The gentle descriptions of the “lustrous and serene” moon, the quiet street, and the sparrows that “twittered sleepily” also contribute to the poignant, reflective mood here.
This mood shift is significant as it points to the seriousness underlying the story—O. Henry is not writing this to make light of the experience of houseless people but to highlight the very real and devastating effects being homeless has on a person. While Soapy seems to exist in denial about his situation for much of the story, here he finally faces what he’s lost in being trapped in the cycles of poverty, homelessness, and crime. And—O. Henry hopes—readers will be able to face this reality, too.
