Almotari 1
Hussein Almotari
Mr.Borrelli
ENG2D1-07
March 4, 2013 The Sane Sanity is the basis of the mind. Without sanity, people become mindless. In Charlie Fish’s short story-Death by Scrabble, the protagonist displays very strong mental instability. He is playing Scrabble with his wife and he secretly wants to kill her the entire time. His sanity then becomes questionable as the story progresses. The theme of sanity is reinforced in “Death by Scrabble” by the literary devices foreshadowing and irony. The story begins and right away we know that the husband hates his wife. The very first words are, “It’s a hot day and I hate my wife.”(1) The first statement makes you realize that the story can only go downhill from here. You cannot tell what the outcome of the story will be from these words, but it foreshadows that there is going to be a consequence for his words. He begins to complain about his life, how he has not done the things he has wanted to do and he does not have the things that he has always wanted. He truly believes that all of it is his wife’s fault. He looks at her in disgust and everything she does aggravates him. He over- exaggerates the things that he could have been doing. He makes the life that he would have had sound amazing compared to the one that he has now. This is the first sign that he is unstable. It really is not practical that due to having his wife he cannot do things such as, “…climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. I’d be starring in the latest Hollywood blockbuster.”(2) You can achieve all those things, and many more with or without a wife. His wife plays a word on the board which put her in the lead, so he starts to think of killing her. Almotari 2
No truly sane person would want to murder someone over a Scrabble game or any board game in general. Another sign that he is mentally unstable. He thinks that by playing words that relate to death and pain, that it can somehow send a message to his wife that he wants to kill her. A sane person would look at the words and take no regard to their meaning, they would just think that it was part of the--
--game. The fact that he even thought of it makes it clear that he is starting to lose his mind. He thinks that the words will guide him into what he should do, “…the letters will tell me what to do. If they spell out KILL, or STAB…I’ll do it right now. I’ll finish her off.”(3) The words began to take effect in real life.
Whatever the word is, something happens to correspond to it. This changes the situation dramatically.
Since the words take effect, whatever is played will happen. This is strengthening the theory that something bad is going to happen, whether it be to the wife or to the husband. When the game begins to take effect, he truly starts to lose his mind. At first he doesn’t seem to believe it, but he attempts a word, “I play FLY…I sit back in my chair and I close my eyes, waiting for the sensation of rising up from my chair.”(4) But he realizes that each word can be misinterpreted by the game. So, “I need to play something unambiguous. Something that cannot be misinterpreted…something murderous.”(5) This is where you realize that there is no turning back for him now, his sanity is gone. The only thing that remains is his utter desire to eliminate his wife. He plays the word QUAKE, hoping that this will do with her, but his wife makes an unexpected move, and plays MURDER as the room begins to shake. The husband chokes on a piece that he was chewing on, and he dies as his wife watches him. The irony in the story is that the husband’s goal was to murder his wife. He thought of so many different ways, and when it finally hit him, his chance was stripped from him. His downfall was his lust to destroy his wife, who seems sane, and in control. When humans remain sane, they have the ability to think, to do, to act. When they act out of insanity, they are not using common judgment, which will ultimately lead to their failure. Without the mind, a human is nothing more but an existing heap of matter.