Amanda Liford
11/05/2013
Short Story Analysis
The Catbird Seat The Catbird Seat, written by James Thurber, is a short story about Mr. Martin who carefully puts together a plan to remove the new special advisor who has done nothing but threaten to eliminate his department and belittle him. She even asks him if he is “sitting in the catbird seat?” which he later finds out means sitting pretty. This story doesn’t end the way he had planned or does it?
The story begins with Mr. Martin secretly buying a pack of Camels cigarettes because the staff of F&S believe that he has never smoked or drank. Mr. Martin has been working for F&S for twenty-two years. He is a very concentrated man and worker. Mr. Martin is very set in his ways and almost even OCD. He has his routine and he sticks to it. Not only that but he is very thoughtful about what he is trying to accomplish and looks at everything and every step of every possible outcome. This has been the reason for his success. So when someone like the new special advisor, Mrs. Barrows, comes in and tries to delete Mr. Martin’s department, he has a good reason to be upset that someone is messing with his routine. She has also been the cause of several other employees quitting or being fired. Mr. Martin sees the threat she has caused this company and will find a way to take care of it. Mr. Martin has carefully crafted a way to surprisingly kill Mrs. Barrows. This doesn’t seem like something Mr. Martin could execute but like everything else, Mr. Martin has listed and went over a hundred times all the reasons and the possible risk of every account. He has told himself over and over that he has every reason to kill her and the jury would agree. A few nights later, Mr. Martin shows up to Mrs. Barrow’s apartment ready to kill her. While inside having a conversation with her, he comes to realize that his plan for killing her is crazy. Mr. Martin then agrees to a drink and takes a cigarette out to smoke. No one has ever seen him do this and thought that he never had. Mr. Martin starts insulting their boss and Mrs. Barrows doesn’t like it, so she ends up making him leave. As he is leaving, he asks her to never tell their boss, Mr. Fitweller. At this point in the story, I couldn’t tell if Mr. Martin had done these things in front of her on purpose or not, but whatever way it becomes clear that this moment will be the start of the end. The next day Mrs. Barrows tells Mr. Fitweller everything that Mr. Martin said and done the night before. Mr. Fitweller calls Mr. Martin into his office 45 minutes later where he explains to Mr. Martin he didn’t believe her because Mr. Martin was the type of person to never say or do such things. Mr. Martin tells Mr. Fitweller that he has no idea what Mrs. Barrows was talking about and he was the at the company party, which was true. Mr. Fitweller goes on to say the Mrs. Barrows is suffering from psychological stress, when she comes in yelling that leads to her being ushered out of the building. So Mr. Martin has won, his plan worked out all along. I wondered that since Mr. Martin had worked out every outcome in his head, if he knew exactly what he was doing. I knew Mr. Martin was not going to go through with killing her because it was clear he knew it was wrong and was just trying to cover it up with reasoning. Mr. Martin also probably knew he wouldn’t be able to kill her and went through every aspect of a plan B also. If Martin is going to go through every possible outcome in his head to get rid of this women, then I believe he is the best employee and deserves his job.