Analyse af 'The Man Who Loved Flowers'

The short story “The Man Who Loved Flowers” takes place an early evening in May 1963 in New York. “He had that look about him. He was dressed in a light grey suit, the narrow tie pulled down a little, his top collar button undone. His hair was dark and cut short. His complexion was fair, his eyes light blue. Not an extraordinary face…” (p. 14. l. 13-16). Here we get a glimpse of what he looks like, and how people in the city see him.He also seems very friendly and polite when he talks to people, and from his outside look, he does not look like a man that would kill anybody. For example:” I'm gonna tell you what I think. Hey! Advice is still free, isn't it?' The young man smiled and said, 'I guess it's the only thing left that is.” (p. 16. l. 8-9). He answers the florist in a nice way, very polite. He does not seem like the person who would hurt anybody or get in any kind of trouble. It seems like he wants the world to look at him, like everything is happiness and sunshine, nothing is wrong with this world or with him. And this is where we realize that he has two personalities; the one on the outside who seems happy and like everything is perfect, and then there is the one we get to know later in the story, who is very suspicious and ends up killing an innocent woman. And we hear that this is not the first time he kills somebody. He starts of by being this sweet and innocent guy, that looks like he never would hurt anybody, but as time goes by, we learn that he is not just this innocent man. He ends up killing a woman, because he realized that it was not Norma, who he first thought it was. He kills her with a hammer that he has in a pocket, and it has been there all the time.One of the themes, and properly the one I think is the most important is that the man in the story has a mental illness, and he goes around the city killing innocent women. “… and she wasn’t Norma, Norma was dead, she had been dead for ten years, and it didn’t matter because she was going to scream and he swung the hammer to stop the scream, to kill the scream…” (p. 17. l 49 con. p. 18 l. 1-2). I do not believe he killed Norma, but I can’t tell for sure. But I think this woman Norma, is someone he even had a crush on or was in a relationship with. And she either rejected or broke up with him, and now he is proceeding to kill other women, in order to get his revenge.