The Unicorn in The Garden was written by James Thurber.

He was a celebrated
wit and comes from a delightfully crazy family in Columbus, Ohio. He was an American
cartoonist, author and humorist. His arts such as cartoons and short stories were
published and collected in some of his books. He was known as an urban man who
escapes into fantasy world as he was perplexed or beset by a world that he knew or
created. His bizarre view of the world can be seen through his style of drawings or the
contents of the short stories. He wrote a story about the existence of a unicorn that was
seen by the husband in The Unicorn in The Garden for instance. Logically, a unicorn did
not exist in real life since it was only referred as the ancient myths or a mythical
creature. Thus, we can conclude that James Thurber was an imaginative author that
wrote many fictional short stories that reflected his background and characteristic as a
humorous person.

The theme of The Unicorn in The Garden is conflicts in marriage. At the

beginning of the story, when the husband told the wife about the existence of unicorn,
she looked at him with an unfriendly eye and told him that unicorn is a mythical beast
and when the husband insisted on telling her about the unicorn that ate the tulip for the
second time, she treated him coldly by calling him a booby and threatened to place him
in an asylum. This evident shows that the couple were having a trust issue. The way
they treated each other did not represent a happy marriage. Other than that, they were
trying to get rid of each other when the wife called the police and the psychiatrist to
report about her husband’s unusual behaviour and the husband denied having seen a
unicorn to the authorities that backfired his wife’s plan to put him in an institution.

Simile can also be found in this short story and can be detected easily by the use
of words such as ‘like’ or ‘as’. The example of simile is “ the wife got up and dressed up
as fast as she could “. The simile showed the enthusiasm of the wife to get rid of her
husband by calling the authorities that eventually led her to be in the institution. Not only
that, his wife’s desire to get rid of him can clearly be seen by the use of the syntactic
repetition “ she telephoned the police and she telephoned a psychiatrist. “.The repetition
added up the rhythm and illustrated her pace.

The short story takes place in a two-storeyed house since the author mentioned
that “ the man went up to the bedroom “ which referred to the husband that eagerly
wanted to tell his wife about the mythical creature in the garden who sleeps in the
bedroom upstair. A house usually symbolizes a private,comfort and protected place just
like our mother’s womb that allow us to live a happy life but in this short story, instead of
being a safe or cozy place for both of them, the house was the place where the wife
was subdued by the authorities and associated with the madness. In this short story, the
garden was the place where the husband saw the unicorn. In a fable, a unicorn often
symbolizes happiness, miracles and enchanted while the garden was a place of
wonders for the husband. When the husband saw the unicorn in the garden, it was
actually his hallucination towards a happy marriage.

The characters in this short story are the husband,the wife,the psychiatrist,the
unicorn and the police. The husband and the wife are the protagonists but their
characteristics are opposite to each other. The husband was known as an independent
and clever character while the wife was known as an opportunist and a rude character.
For example, “ a man who sat in a breakfast nook  looked up from his scrambled
eggs… “ showed that the husband prepared his own breakfast even though a woman
should be doing all the house chores or cater for her husband during that era. The
husband was also smart by denying the fact that he saw the unicorn to the police that
caused his wife to be placed in the mental institution. The dialogue “ You are a booby “
showed that the wife was rude because the husband never like that word. She was an
opportunist when she dressed up quickly and called the authorities to send her husband
to the asylum when the husband went out of the house.

Next, there is also a personification. For instance, “ She opened one unfriendly
eye “. The author was giving a human quality to the eye as unfriendly. It gave the reader
a clear vision of how the wife treated her husband. It also revealed how unhappy or
tense the relationship between the couple. Other literary device is foreshadowing like
when the husband told his wife, “ We’ll see about that “. This short dialogue was after
the wife told her husband, “ and I am going to have you put in the booby-hatch. “. The
husband’s dialogue foreshadowed the wife’s fate that will be seized or subdued by the
police.

The unicorn in the garden is written in third person point of view. The author or
narrator reffered to the characters by using names or pronouns like ‘he’,’she’ or ‘they’.
As an example, “ They had a hard time subduing her.. “ , the pronoun ‘they’ and ‘her’
were used. By using third person point of view, the reader can have a clearer
understanding of the story since they can differentiate between facts and opinions.

References
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