Charlie Fish describes a rather unfortunate turn of events for a man playing a simple game with his wife in “Death by Scrabble. ” The first few paragraphs describe a very aggravated man who has much hatred built up towards his wife and the heat. While initially it is hard to figure out if the man is being sarcastic with his crude comments, Fish allows his seriousness to shine when our protagonist wishes death upon his wife.
The events following come out of no where when in the end, the man is the one to die. The main character in “Death by Scrabble” is a very unhappily married man. During his game of scrabble he realizes that the words he plays actually happen in real life. Once he realizes this, he begins to wish for letters that would allow him to spell things like “murder” and “stab.
” What he doesn’t realize is that the words his wife are playing come to life as well and for this reason he is a static character.Although you do learn anything from the wife's perspective, it seems that she also realizes the magic of the game and plays “death” as her final word, resulting in her husband choking on the letter he was chewing on. The theme of this story is “karma. ” The man spends the entire game wishing he would receive a pile of letters allowing him to create something that would harm his wife. In the end, he fails and his wife is the one who winds up with the proper letters to create “death.
” The man was so focused on what he wanted to happen to his wife, that he failed to realize it could happen to him as well.
