'The Unicorn in the Garden', analyse af James Thurbers novelle

This story called “The unicorn in the garden” was written by James Thurber who was an American writer.

The unicorn in the garden is a short story, because there are not so many persons in it. The narrator in the story is a third-person narrator, who is not all-knowing, because he does not know how the husband and the wife feel. I think it’s an adventure because the story begins with: Once upon a sunny morning.. And in the end: The husband lived happily ever after.. The main character in ‘The unicorn in the Garden’ is the husband. He is the person we hear the most about and follow throughout the story.

The unicorn in the garden is a story about a husband who is eating his breakfast, when suddenly he sees a unicorn in the family’s garden. It is cropping the roses, and he went to the bedroom to tell his wife about it. She was trying to sleep, so she only opened her one eye and ridicules him, and telling him the unicorn is “a mythical beast.” He went downstairs again and went out to the garden. The unicorn was still there; he pulled up a lily and gave it to the unicorn. The unicorn ate it gravely. The husband gets enthusiastic and ran up to the bedroom once again, to tell the wife, that the unicorn ate a lily. Then she calls him a “booby”. When he persists, she threatens to send him to the “booby hatch” (the mental institution.) He goes back outside, to the garden to watch the unicorn again, but now it was gone by the wind. He sat down among the roses, and went to sleep. As soon as the husband left the house, the wife hurried up, got in her clothes and telephones the police and the psychiatrist. She tells them that her husband saw a unicorn in their garden this morning, and that they have to come to her house with a strait-jacket. When the police and the psychiatrist came, she told them that the unicorn had a golden horn in the middle of it forehead. They make a decision that the wife is the booby, and not the husband, they put her in the strait-jacket instead. While all this was going on, the husband came back into the house. They ask him if he has told his wife, that he saw a unicorn in their garden this morning, and he reply: “Of course not! The Unicorn is a mythical beast.” After this answer the psychiatrist tells the police, that the wife is crazy. The psychiatrist tells the husband that they have to take his wife with them, because she is as crazy as a jay bird. So they take the wife away instead of the husband. And the story ends with: The husband lived happily ever after.