Germaine Herrera

11 - Truthfulness (HUMSS)
EAPP Summarized Paper
21/09/2020

“Love is a Fallacy”
By Max Shulman
Character Introduction:
Unnamed Narrator - A law student that describes himself as cool and logical but just seems
self-righteous and he evaluates and “fixes” women so that they can be “worthy of him” so it’s a
possibility that he’s also a little bit misogynistic.
Petey Burch - The university roommate of the unnamed narrator. Same age and background as
the unnamed narrator but is described as being “dumb as an ox” but impressionable and has a
faddist mindset considering his strange obsession with the raccoon coat fad.
Polly Espy - Described as a beautiful and gracious girl albeit a bit slow-witted.

Summary:
There is a self-righteous man who is a law student at a particular university and his roomate,
Petey Burch, irked him because he’s dumb as an ox and a faddist despite them being the same
background and age. But Petey’s obsession with raccoon coats became an opportunity for the
man to get Polly Espy. The man values the need for a wife that can further his career as a lawyer.
Polly fit in his specifications for a wife but she was not intelligent so he decided to just smarten
her up. After the man picked up his father’s raccoon coat, he tried to convince Petey and within a
short amount of time, Petey decided to cave in and give him Polly. The man scored a date with
Polly and is determined to smarten her up so he tested her in a course of logic. They discussed
the fallacies of logic but Polly always answered incorrectly though in her last chance, she was
able to correctly answer. After the five evenings they spent, he decided to take their relationship
to the next step. He told her they are well matched, but Polly began to respond by telling him
which type of logical fallacy he is using in his statement. He tried to reason with Polly but he just
decided to just bluntly ask her out. Polly rejected him, explaining that she promised Petey Burch
that she would go steady with him this afternoon. The man didn’t take the rejection well but
Polly still responded the same. The man tried to reason with her again, saying he’s a better fit
because he’s a brilliant man with a future ahead while Petey is a knothead into which she replied
that she wants to go steady with Petey because he has a raccoon coat.

(There are 300 words in total for the summary.)