Death by Scrabble by Charlie Fish

In the short story Death By Scrabble, Charlie Fish tells a story of a bitter man who is contemplating killing his wife as they engage in a game of Scrabble. Throughout the game, the man notices that the words played on the board manifest into action. After he figures out the words played are coming true, he tries to play words so he can kill her. In the end, he ends up dying after his wife plays the word “death”.

The man expresses his extreme anger and resentment toward his wife throughout the story.

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The husband and wife seem to share mutual feelings of hatred. He tells himself that if the letters “give him a sign” he will kill her right then and there. He tries to manipulate the game so he can kill his wife but he is killed instead. The fact that he ultimately dies makes him a static character. Another reason he is to be considered a static character is that he did not gain any insight throughout the story. He failed to see that blaming his wife for is happiness won’t make him any happier.

The theme of the story is blame. The husband expresses throughout the duration of the story that he blames his wife for his misery. He fails to realize that she most likely possesses similar feelings of unhappiness. He reasons that if she were dead he would be happier. The central idea of the story is escapist. The husband wants to escape his marriage so badly that he plots to murder his wife.

He blames her for his unhappiness and feels he can escape his misery by killing her. Sadly, the main character lacked the insight to see that other people cannot be to blame for your own happiness.