PERSONAL RESPONSE

RESPONSE: THE UNICORN IN THE GARDEN BY JAMES

THURBER

BY: AISHA BINTI AZMAN (TESL 1)

In my opinion, the storyline of this story is pretty interesting eventhough

the storyline is kinda short and precise. This story started off when a man who
is also a husband looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn
with a golden horn, and this makes me want to read further more. When I
read the reaction of his wife makes me think that their relationship is not well.
This is because most of girls especially me will feel so excited if we have a
chance to meet a unicorn! But, the wife’s reaction is totally different from other
typical girls. Instead of being excited, she told her husband that the unicorn is
a mystical beast.

The second time the husband woke his wife up to tell about the unicorn,
the wife called him as ‘booby’ and she was going to put him in the ‘booby-
hatch’. ‘Booby-hatch’ here means a mental institution. Thus, I want to interpret
the “We’ll see about that” word said by the husband that he was actually
already planned to get his wife taken away by the police and psychiatrist.

The plot twist at the end was actually the best part of this short story and it
was such an unexpected move. The wife told the police and psychiatrist about
the unicorn to make her husband looked as a booby man because he saw the
unicorn but unfortunately instead of her husband, she was the person that
being taken away by the police and psychiatrist. This is because the husband
simply denied the fact that he saw the unicorn and told his wife about it.
Furthermore, the word “the husband lived happily ever after” does makes me
wonder that he was not happy being a husband to his wife. This might mean
that they didn’t have any mutual feelings to each other or basically his wife
was really a crazy woman.