Essay about Death by Scrabble
An essay about the short story by Charlie Fish
Link: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/DeatScra.shtml

The story is made by Charlie Fish in 2006 and is called “Death by Scrabble”, it’s about a husband and wife who play Scrabble. The husband feels that all they ever do is play Scrabble. The husband tells the story, in a way so you can read what he is thinking in the text. The husband is 42 years old, and has a lot of problems with his wife. He feels bored all around the clock. He doesn’t’ really speak to other people than his wife, and that irritates him.

Already in the start of the story, you can read that the husband hates his wife because he say, “It’s a hot day and I hat my wife”. I think he feels like that because all the ever do I sit around home, play Scrabble and drink tea. He feels bored and wants to do something else, just anything than sitting and playing Scrabble. He wants to come out and meet new people, and going on adventures, for example he says in the story “If she wasn’t around, I’d be doing something interesting right now. I’d be climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. I’d be starring in the latest Hollywood blockbusters.” That really shows how he is felling about playing, with his boring wife.

Not only does he hate his wife, but also he wants to kill her, because everything she does is annoying him. He says in the text after they have played Scrabble, for a little while “If only I had D, then I could play MURDER. That would be a sign” and “If they spell out KILL, or stab, or her name, or anything, I’ll do it right now. I’ll finish her off.” The anger inside him is so large, that he wants to kill his own wife over a game of Scrabble. At the same time he wants to win the game. He keeps keeping track of the score in the text, for example he says, “She plays IGNORE on the triple-word for 21 points. The score is 153 to her, 155 to me.” He is both angry and upset, because he feels like his is wasting his life.

Late in the story he finds out the all the words both he and his wife plays become true in reality, for example when the air-conditioner explodes, that is described in the text as “I spot a chance to use all my letters. EXPLODES, using the X of JINXED. 72 points. That’ll show her.” And “As I put down the last letter down, there is a deafening band and the air conditioning unit fails.” Again it shows that he is also very targeted, at winning the game of Scrabble, and it’s here it really opens his eyes that what he plays in the game come to life in real life.
To really check if he was thinking right, when he thought that what he plays in the Scrabble game really comes to life, he check by playing the word fly and closes his eyes and waits to fly, but when he opens them again, a fly swirls above the Scrabble board and not him floating above the floor. “I play fly, using the L of EXPLODES. I sit back in my chair and close my eyes, waiting for the sensation of rising up from my chair. Waiting to fly.” A bit further in the text he says, “Stupid. I open my eyes, and there’s a fly. An insect, buzzing around above the Scrabble board, surfing the thermals from the tepid cup of tea.” Here he is really waiting for the sensation to fly, and not to be bored bur instead he is disappointed again by not flying.

After he feels cheated by the Scrabble game, for not making him fly he says in the text “I need to play something unambiguous. Something that cannot be misinterpreted. Something absolute and final. Something terminal. Something murderous.” He would really like to abolish his wife from this earth, and to be free from the boring life the have together. Black on white, he would like to kill her.

The language in the text is very negative, for example he would like to kill his own wife. The text is also good described by the husband himself, because as the reader you read what he thinks and those thoughts are very dark. A lot of times in the text he thinks of how he could kill his wife, by playing certain words in Scrabble. He thinks of words as “KILL” and “STAB” for if he had played them, it would have been the death of his wife, and the freedom of his own.
The bizarre thing about this story, is that he doesn’t really give a more specific reason for his thoughts of killing her. He just feels bored and sick and tired of playing Scrabble.