Themes

y The struggle between the husband and

wife pits peaceful fantasy (the man) vs. harsh realism (the woman). The moral acknowledges the husband's victory, achieved by a role reversal: the husband stakes claim to the realistic answers expected by the psychiatrist and the police after the wife ironically repeats the husband's earlier fantastic claims. y Fantasy Vs Reality

Characters
CHARACTERS Husband EVIDENCE
GentleHe gave a lily to the unicorn ForeshadowingWe ll see about that and finally he sent his wife to the booby hatch

Wife

Queen ControlShe totally ignored her husband when her husband wake her up. FierceShe was very mean to her husband as she said her husband is a booby. She wanted to sent her husband to the booby hatch UnfriendlyShe approuch her husband rudely Ridiculous and stupidShe called the psychiatrist and the police and asked them to bring the strait-jacket as her husband saw a unicorn in the garden. Mythical BeastMaybe a fantasy come from the husband mind. Short thinkerAs he rushing catch the wife even he did not know the true story LoyalHe just follow the instructions given by the psychiatrist

Unicorn Psychiatrist Police

Plot
y A husband sees a unicorn in the family garden and tells his wife

about it. She ridicules him, telling him the unicorn is "a mythical beast" and calls him a "booby". When he persists, she threatens to send him to the "booby hatch" (the mental institution). "We'll see about that", he says matter-of-factly, going back outside, as she summons the authorities. However, after she tells them what her husband saw, they force her into a straitjacket. Upon his return (having taken a nap in the garden after the unicorn has disappeared), they ask the husband if he told his wife he had seen a unicorn. He tells them that he has not, because "The unicorn is a mythical beast." Thus they take the wife away instead, and "the husband lived happily ever after".

Values
y Do not count your boobies until they are

hatched. y Do not count on things to turn out exactly as you planned them. y This means that things you do which are bad for someone else, in the end often turn out to be bad for yourself.

Symbolism
y Who is mad ? y T a woman who thinks her husband is crazy, but later on

she is the one who is thought to be mad.

y the main characters in this fable are a man and a woman.

Even though it is made obvious who is crazy, I think it is the man because mad people are often intelligent and not responsible for their actions. At the beginning the man behaves weirdly, but in the end he denies the story his wife told the police.

Symbolism
y Thurber criticizes the matter-of-fact world y The man and the woman stand for two different opinions. On

the one hand we have the man who is willing to accept the unicorn and the fantasy world, on the other hand there is the woman who represents prejudice against anything fantastic. She believes in institutions (police and psychiatrist). This can be seen as the author`s moral intention. This story is also a story of a bad marriage. This can be proved by looking at their conversation. Although they speak about the same subject they do not understand each other. The husband sees and feeds the unicorn and she thinks it is a "mythical beast". The man refers to the unicorn as "he" and she says "it". He wants to share his delight and emotions but she refuses. When she wants to send him to a mental hospital he turns the case by quoting her in an ironical way.

Symbolism
y Is the husband a drug-taker? y That women always have to be friendly to their

husbands, else they will tell them a crazy story, so they will end up in a booby-hatch. y The second is that if a man wants his wife to be taken away, he has to be a good liar, because in the story the man knows the truth. Therefore he must have lied, either to his wife or to the police when they asked him. y Drugs are bad things. People will see crazy things, but they will not remember them. y The story maybe only a dream.

Symbolism
y Does the man plan to make his wife crazy with his absurd story ? y Maybe the man in the story is a little bit crazy because of his story with the unicorn in the garden. It is not normal to tell everyone about your appearances of this kind. On the other hand he could be perfidious, because he wants to make his wife crazy with his absurd story. Perhaps he can imagine what will happen if the woman some day believes his stories and tells them somebody else. Possibly he tells her such kind of stories every day so that she goes nutty. But the woman is very perfidious, too, because she is only waiting for a chance to send the man to a booby hatch.

Symbolism
y The f y The

le is f ll f lies i tri es is ct r, eca se is ife elieves t at e sa a ic r i t e r i . irst s e es t elieve i t at e sa a ic r , ic ate r ses a a lily. t later s e is t eca se f t at s e calls t e lice a t e really s re if er s a s st ry is tr e r t a syc iatrist. I t i e is a really act r eca se is ife calls t e lice a t e syc iatrist eca se f t e ic r . is ea s t at s e elieve i a little it a t at s e is rrie a t i . He ts t e l e. e ife is etti is erves it er c l ess a er very frie ly ay t tal it i . e a a ts t say s et i t is ife a after e a es er , s e e s e frie ly eye, says s et i a t r s er ac i (li e 4 i t e fa le). r a l ti e e as ee s a ye it is ife t at e is telli er t is lie. eca se f t is lie a t t e ic r s e is ta e a ay y t e lice a s t i a i stit ti . th, the the , re ic ed eca se t e a tells is ife a lie t I thi c f se er i t at s e calls t e lice. ater e ca e y t e state e t f is ife a if e is l c y s e is s t i a i stit ti . e ife is very ic e , eca se after er s a as t l er s et i a t t e ic r s e calls t e lice a t e syc iatrist e i er s a s ac . er a s s e es t at er s a ill e ta e a ay i t a y atc a t e s e ill e al e a ill l er ave r le s it i ever a ai . I t i t at t e le fa le is f ll f lies a i tri es f t e arrie c le. I ave t e feeli t at t , t e a a t e a , are tire f t eir relati s i a try t et ri f t eir art er. ay e it is etter f r t if t ey et a iv rce. rely lies a i tri es are t e r ay!

Unicorn
y Mythical Beasty Seems like the husband plan to make his wife

crazy with his absurd story ?

Authors
y

Thurber was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 189 . When he was seven, Thurber was blinded in his left eye by an arrow while playing with his brother William. This accident led to lifelong trouble with his eyesight and resulted in total blindness for the ten years prior to his death. Thurber attended Ohio State University and worked in undergraduate journalism while a student there, eventually becoming editor of the Sun-Dial, the campus newspaper. He left the university in 1918 without a degree, in part due to his vision problem. Thurber worked as a code clerk in the State Department for the next two years, serving in both Washington and Paris. Following this, he returned to Columbus and became a reporter on the Dispatch. Thurber went on to work with the Chicago Tribune in France and the Evening Post in New York. In 1927, he joined the New Yorker and stayed there for eight years, eventually becoming a freelance writer. In 1922 Thurber married Althea Adams; they divorced in 1935. He married Helen Wismer a month later, a marriage which lasted until his death. Between the late 1920s and early 19 0s, Thurber's writing achieved international fame for its eccentric humor. When the author suffered a succession of illnesses and lost his sight permanently, his writing took on a more serious tone, even one of despair. Thurber once said that his blindness was a punishment upon him for writing meanly and mockingly of mankind. However, he did continue to write, first with the help of magnifying glasses, then by using crayon on yellow paper. After his blindness became total, he dictated his pieces to secretaries. He died in 1961.

All this is written James Thurber y My Life and hard Times y The middle age man with the Flying Trapeze y The Last Flower. A Parable in Pictures y My world and welcome to it y The White Deer y The Wonderful O y Alarms and Diversions

The End
The husband invited the whole troops of unicorn to live in his garden and he became famous and being the Unicorn Horn seller. One day, when the man talking to his neighbour One of the unicorn over heard their conversation that stated that The silly bloody Unicorn give me money The Unicorns went crazy enough and stabbed the man across his stomach and the man died on the spot tragically. The moral value is . Do not take advantage over someone s specialties.