"The Birthday Party" Analysis

While reading “The Birthday Party”, the author achieves her purpose of showing how un-receptive the husband is towards his wife’s planned gift and blames her for doing something nice for him. Brush accomplishes this task through transitioning the mood that is apparent to the reader and draw emotion to the reader. Also, Brush shift between tones, which in turn affects how the reader perceives the characters of the husband and wife. Included in the tone of the author is a harsh vocabulary that portrays the husband in a mean and ungrateful light. As the story begins the mood of it is happy and upbeat. To the reader, it appears that the only thing occurring is a “the husband’s birthday.” Also to play in to their happy feeling is displaying how the “the wife beamed with shy pride,” and all seems to be well. Quickly though, the mood shifts, and the husband now appears upset, therefore causing a more sad and depressing mood. This can be taken from statements such as the husband was “indignant at his wife” or “hotly embarrassed.” These statements display the saddened mood because the couple no longer appears to be happily married and in conjunction the narrator herself cannot stand to view the awkward situation that has unfolded. As the story begins, Brush appears to be laying out the facts in a very straight forward and dull tone. Towards the middle of the story, however, it transitions to appear much more judgmental of the unappreciative husband and in turn affects the mood of the story. Because Brush refers to the husband as “not pleased” it shows the downward turn in the story. Because her tone changes to be more disapproving it is clear to the reader that Brush is becoming more serious. Upon reference towards the wife, Brush uses a more sympathetic tone that causes the reader to feel sorry for her in contrast to the feeling for the husband. This sympathetic tone created by Brush can be seen through the incorporation of statements such as “Oh, now don’t be like