Jason Marquez
October 31, 2012
CBI Sr. English, Q1 “The Wife’s Story” is a tale by Ursula K. Le Guin is a very surprising science fiction story that reverses the werewolf idea. A wolf turns into a man and scares the living daylights out of his wolf wife and wolf children. What makes this story interesting is that Le Guin tricks us, throughout much of the story, into believing that the tale is about humans. Le Guin point was to make the whole story ironic because the reader expects the husband to be a husband and for everybody to be normal but then the reader should soon realize that the family is a family of wolves and that the husband is a werewolf. The story takes a view of how wolves would see a werewolf. I believe Le Guin chose to write this story with a first person narrator because it is more effective to the reader. In the first paragraph of The Wife’s Story says, “I don’t believe it happened. I saw it happen but it isn’t true. It can’t be. He was always gentle”. This shows the wife’s emotions after she discovers her husband is a werewolf. She is confused and still feels everything is unreal. Le Guin’s choice of writing this story in a first person narrative keeps the reader interested and motivated to keep reading. The narrator’s voice in The Wife’s Story affects how the reader responds to the story because of the tone the narrator uses telling her experience discovering her husband’s secret. In this story, Le Guin helps the reader relate to the wife and how she was married to a werewolf without knowing it.
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