The Twilight Zone - Book Report/Review Example

? Comparison Of Two Stories There are two stories which we’ll be taking into consideration. To begin with, let’s discuss the authors of both the stories. The first one is a short story “The story of an hour’’ by Kate Chopin. This story is popular mainly because of its surprise ending which shocked the readers. In this story the writer explores a theme for which she is famous for. The other story that we will be discussing is “Death by Scrabble” by Charlie Fish. By its title name we can guess that the story is related to the popular game ‘Scrabble’, the author himself is an avid Scrabble player and wrote this story thinking “What would happen if a game of Scrabble had the highest possible stakes? Life and death? I wanted to write a story that felt like a Twilight Zone episode” The first story “The Story of an Hour” starts with Josephine, sister of Louise Mallard who is a heart patient, telling Mrs Mallard about the shocking news of her husband’s death in a railroad accident. On hearing this shocking news, Louise runs to her room, locks it, and sits there looking out at an open window. She is going through a mix of emotions at this point of time and suddenly starts realizing and feeling that she would now lead an independent life, a life in which she is free to do whatever she wants, even though her husband never oppressed her from doing so yet she feels that somehow unknowingly one does get oppressed out of kindness and so she wants to live a free and an independent life. She feels ecstatic with her newfound independence though she loved her husband too, but tells herself that none of that matters anymore. She then opens the door and goes down again with Josephine when suddenly sees her husband Mr Brently coming from the front door, he was alive and neither had he been in any accident nor was he aware of it. Josephine screams seeing him and doctors come and pronounce Louis dead of a heart attack which was brought on by happiness. In such an unbelieving way, the author twisted the whole story giving the readers a very shocking end. While “Death by scrabble” begins with a man who is hating his wife on a really boiling hot afternoon. This man hates his wife more than anything, but still he hasn’t spoken to anyone else but her since three days. The couple starts their game with the word ‘begin’ on the board. During the whole game the man wants letters like ‘murder’ or anything which would show his hatred towards his wife. The story gets interesting when the man starts noticing that the words on the board are actually choosing their future because apparently the whole game is ‘jinxed’ as it was one of their words on the board. So to confirm and test this, he uses a dangerous word ‘quake’ to which his wife uses ‘death’ just when the room started shaking, the letter ‘B’ that the man was chewing on gets stuck in his throat, he coughs, goes red and blue, his throat swells and falls on the floor due to the earthquake. He dies while his wife just sits there watching him. As the author intends, the story definitely gives a feeling of the twilight zone. In “The Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin employs some specific structural and stylistic techniques which create more suspense in the drama of the hour. This story is short, and is made up of a series of short paragraphs, some of which consist of only two or three sentences. If we read carefully, we’d notice that this story covers only one hour in Louise Mallard’s life something which even the author states in the title, an hour which starts when she learns of her husband’s death till the moment she sees him return alive again, same way even in “The death by scrabble” the story is centered mainly on how the protagonist dies because of scrabble because the game was jinxed. “The story of an Hour” is a short story which can be read quickly leaving a great impact. Writer Kati Chopin gives shocking surprises in each part of the story, from Louise Mallard’s elated reaction when she first murmurs ‘free’ to herself till the conclusion when she passes away because of Brently’s return; or when she dies of a ‘heart disease’ which echoes the mention of ‘heart trouble’ in the starting of the story, intensifying the twist ending and bringing the story to a very satisfying end. However, in ‘The Death by Scrabble’ it feels like the author did not think so much over a more realistic presentation of the story, a more shocking story, though it does has one surprise for the readers in between when the man finally gets to know that the scrabble words are basically choosing their future, at this point the story becomes little interesting as the reader tries to figure out what the frustrated man will do next. Because such a short story doesn’t leave any room for background information, flashbacks, or excessive speculation, Kate Chopin makes every sentence important in her small short story and employs an almost poetic writing style something which is missing in the writing style of ‘Charlie Fish’ in ‘Death by Scrabble’. Kate Chopins uses repetition so as to highlight important points, for instance, Kate repeats the word open throughout the story to emphasize the freedom of Louise’s new life. Also the word free is repeated again and again as well, which Louise speaks aloud in the story indicating how much she cherishes her newfound freedom and independence; besides repeating words, Chopin also repeats phrases and sentence structures to highlight important points. However if we look upon ‘Death by Scrabble’, Charlie Fish fails to amaze the readers with his writing style. The story seemed funny at times, at times it felt like its written by a male chauvinist as the man hates his wife; it basically seems a very twisted tale which could have been written in a much better way so as to let the readers know exactly what the characters were like and what exactly they felt, because at one point the writer says that the man hates his wife more than anything yet she is the only one whom he has talked to since three days; then he hates playing scrabble but the scrabble letters are all chewed by him which means that he plays scrabble often. What Charlie Fish failed in expressing is that why the husband does all the things which he doesn’t want to do if he hates his wife so much. An extremely important factor that we can notice in ‘Story of an Hour’ is that Kate Chopins conveyed the frustrations of a woman of the late nineteenth century, when Mrs Mallard becomes happy of her independence; it portrays the thinking of a late nineteenth century woman. The women of that era mostly live in a state better than slavery who had to obey their men’s orders without any sort of objections, they had absolutely no proper say in any decisions of the house or family as well. Everything that the woman owned or inherited automatically belonged to the husband and this right was given to the men by the law and assured by the woman verbally on the marriage day as one of the vows. This could be one of the reasons as to why Kate Chopins showed Mrs Mallard happy on her independence when she gets the false news of her husband’s death in a rail road accident. Another aspect that we should look upon is the difference in language used by both the writers between the two stories where Kate Chopins has an extremely serious and to the point way of portraying the story in ‘The Story of an Hour’ while Charlie Fish portrays a suppose to be twilight visioned story with full of humor. As a personal opinion, I would definitely say that Kate Chopins did a wonderful job with her short story ‘The Story of an Hour’. Her characters and their emotions were beautifully expressed by her, in such a way that they needed no background information or any flashbacks while Charlie Fish’s story ‘Death by Scrabble’ had many flaws which could’ve been improved. However, if we don’t go into the extreme writing details of ‘Death by Scrabble’ and read it with a free mind we would enjoy it, because of the humor at certain parts, also because it is supposedly of the twilight zone which many readers like. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Chopins, Kate. "'The Story of an Hour' Short Story." Books & Literature Classics. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2013. . Fish, Charlie. "Short Stories: Death By Scrabble by Charlie Fish." east of the web. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2013. . Read More