"Death by Scrabble" by Charlie Fish

“Death by Scrabble” written by Charlie Fish tells a story of a husband who, without a clear explanation, has an extreme hatred for his wife. While playing Scrabble on a hot summer day, he comes to believe that the words he is playing are coming true. After coming to this conclusion, he tries to think of words to play that will cause his wife’s death. But in the end, she ultimately “wins” the game.

The husband, whose point of view the story is written, makes it obvious from the beginning that he hates his wife and blames her for all of his unhappiness in life. Throughout the story, he tries to kill her by playing certain words during their Scrabble game. What he fails to realize, is that she quite possibly has mutual feelings of blame, hatred and death towards him and that blaming someone else for his unhappiness will not get him anywhere. It is this that indicates to me that his character is static.

The central idea of this story is escapist. It was entertaining and I felt sorry for the husband in the end even though he spent the whole story trying to kill his wife. The theme of the story is blame. The husband blames his wife for his unhappiness, so much so that he thinks that he would be better off if she was dead. I think that a lesson from this story would be to not blame others for your unhappiness, because most of the time it is probably something inside yourself causing the