Seventeen Oranges Lesson Summary

The seventeen oranges lesson was written by author Bills Naughton, who narrates a story about seventeen oranges. The author was a famous playwright and author.

In this story, the narrator is a young boy who works in a dockyard as a cart driver. He love's to eat oranges day and night. He also has a habit of taking things with him, coming on the ship, and putting them in an apron. Another person in the story is Clem (the narrator's friend), who also takes things away from the dock.

One day, police caught him with the seventeen oranges in his pockets and arrest him. But his friend was never caught by the police as he was a careful planner of thefts. From that day or time, boy has never eaten an orange.

The narrator works for Swift Delivery Company as a driver with a little pony with which he used to go in and out of the dockyard. During work, he wore an apron made by himself which was large in size and used by him to hide something that came in the dockyard. Whenever a boat with bananas came to the dockyard, he drove his cart beside it. During the shifting of bananas, when a bunch of bananas fell to the ground, they were pushed aside towards him slightly from the boat by his friends. He picked those bananas and hid them in his apron to eat them for the rest of the day. Instead, he ate bananas but was more fond of oranges than bananas.

Generally, he only took things found on the boat or left accidentally, but some person plans to steal things from the boat. The theft name in the story is Clem Jones, who was never caught red-handed. But one day, a policeman named Pongo stopped Clem to show up what he had in the box. Clem answered that he was carrying a cat in the box and if he showed him, the cat would run away, but the policeman didn't believe him. After being forced by Pongo, Clem got irritated and opened the box, and suddenly, the cat jumped off the box and ran toward the dockyard. Clam shouted angrily after the cat and returned with the box holding the lid tightly after two minutes. Clem was burning in anger, but Pongo laughed at the whole situation. Clem came out angrily, but after returning home, he smiled because he had removed a big Dutch cheese from the box.

But the boy was not so lucky because when Pongo caught him to check, he found his pockets were bulging. After all, the boy's string apron was broken. Pongo finds something that the boy couldn't hold. The policeman checked a boy's pockets by taking him to the room and holding his collar. Pongo found seventeen oranges in the pocket and placed them in front of the boy to ask questions. Pongo asked people steal things and what he had stolen oranges?? What boy had to say about these oranges that came into his pockets.

The boy got scared and kept his mouth sealed because he had read many detective stories. He knew his words could be taken as evidence against him, so he didn't make any necessary comments. Again the policeman (Pongo) asked him for clarification and called his other colleague to witness in the court. Pongo arrested and locked him in the cabin so he couldn't escape. The scared boy looked at all the sides of the wall and the door. There he also found the seventeen oranges and his apron with a broken string and thought he would probably go to jail for stealing and losing his job. The boy reminds him about his father, hoe he react- maybe his father scolded him or felt terrible about this. He has no idea what to do, so he felt sick. During this, Policeman (Pongo) was out to call another policeman as valid proof, and inside, the boy was locked with oranges.

The boy was praying to God and asked him what to do, and suddenly, his inner voice told him to eat all the oranges. He asked himself if he was thinking right, so the answer was a big "yes!". After thinking about a second, the boy thought about the remain of oranges, like seeds and peels of oranges were left out, and to remove all the evidence, he had to remove them too. His inner voice told him he had less time to remove the evidence, so he needed to swallow them.

So he swallowed seeds and peels, too, to erase the objective evidence. A once boy thought he could chew the peals, but he had no time for them, so he took a small knife from his pocket, made two big pieces of oranges, and swallowed them individually. He was only able to eat fourteen orange, and three was remaining, suddenly boy heard the voice of Pongo. Instead, his stomach was full, but an internal voice asked him to swallow left oranges as soon as possible. He swallowed up two oranges one by one, and suddenly the door opened. He instantly finished off the third one with a lot of struggle.

Pongo reached with another policeman to the cabin, showed the boy to him, and claimed him as the thief. Pongo told him he had caught the boy red-handed with oranges in his pocket. But Pongo couldn't find any orange on the table and get amazed & imagined what had happened. The other policeman could smell oranges, so Pongo searched for them in the boy's pocket and apron but couldn't find even one orange.

Pongo was amazed and exclaimed to the boy, "Seventeen oranges" How could you eat such big oranges? He shouted and became enraged at the boy, but the boy maintained his silence. Due to a lack of evidence, he had to let off the boy. The boy narrates the whole story to Clem Jones, and Clem gets worried that Pongo locked the boy in the cabin for half an hour; besides, he had no right to that. The boy couldn't have time to think inside the locked cabin, so he ate seventeen big oranges with peels and seeds. The boy was unwell due to the oranges in his stomach, which were too much for him.

Lesson given by story: Never be obsessed with things you like, THE MOST!