Trifles by Susan Glaspell is a tragedy play about Mrs Wright being a suspect to the

murder of her husband, John Wright where has been strangled to death with a rope in his

mega-creepy Midwestern farmhouse. As the County Attorney, Sheriff Peters, and a neighboring

farmer named Mr. Hale investigate the house for clues, the real investigators turn out to be Mrs.

Hale and Mrs. Peters. To me, the symbolism used has given greater value towards the play. It

will be further discussed in this essay in terms of three symbols portrayed in this play, which are

the shattered jars, the dead bird and the broken cage.

Another symbol used in this play is the shattered jars. As the menfolk see a bunch of

sticky, glass-infused goop they only see a disgusting mess, but I realized how much work it

actually represents when Mrs Hale said “She'll feel awful bad after all her hot work in the hot

weather. I remember the afternoon I put up my cherries last summer.” This illustrates the

preserves are symbolic of all the woman's work. I felt the disrespect men have for the women in

this play especially when the sheriff said “Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder and

worryin' about her preserves.” Thus, it seems to me that the preserves themselves can definitely

be seen as representing the world of women as a whole and that the jars of preserves shattered

constitute to the shattered emotional state of Mrs Wright.

The dead bird and the broken cage are one of the most emblematic symbols in ‘Trifles’.

Before Mrs. Wright got married, she was known as Minnie Foster, “one of the town girls singing

in the choir”, states Mrs. Hale. The writer illustrates Minnie Foster as “kind of like a bird herself

─── real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and ─── fluttery.” This shows that Mrs. Wright was

once a free and cheerful person. When the women found the dead bird in the kitchen, Mrs. Hale

said that “Wright wouldn’t like the bird ─── a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that,

too.” I was drawn into the story through this line as it shows that Mrs. Wright was killed

emotionally. Her dreams and passion for singing were shattered in result of being caged like a

bird during her entire marriage to John Wright. The use of this symbol made me imagine Minnie
Foster for that sweet, fluttery girl who was transformed into the lonely, depressed Mrs. Wright by

the years of her husband's neglect and emotional abuse. The fate of the bird in this play

resembles Mrs. Wright.

When the women found the cage, the door was already broken. It has been violently torn

off. I quickly learn that John Wright was definitely the one who tore the door off so that he could

wring the bird's neck, just because he did not like to hear noises in his house. This symbolic

murder of the bird might be the reason that leads to the murder of John Wright. I am able to

understand that John Wright’s actions had pushed Mrs. Wright to her final endurance towards

him. Hence, it was the driving force that makes her strangle her husband in much the same way

the bird was killed.

To conclude, the symbolism used by the writer have the effect of making the plot of the

play more complex. It endows parts of the story with at least two layers of meaning, which are

the obvious literal meaning and the more complex symbolic meaning. As a result, they

illuminate the deeper meaning of the story.