Isolation Kills
It is the year 1916, and a local farmer, John Wright, is found with a rope around his neck, dead in his own home. In Susan Glaspell’s one-act play, Trifles, the characters are hard-pressed to discover a motive behind the murder of Mr. Wright. His wife, Mrs. Wright, is a prime suspect in the case. While the men search the house for clues, the women linger in the kitchen. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are able to slowly piece together a possible motive when they take into consideration the fact that John Wright was a hard man, the couple never had any children, and Minnie Wright had a strangled bird in her sewing basket. As the women explore these trifles, they begin to discover how truly isolated Minnie was from the outside world.
John Wright was not a bad man. As Mrs. Hale tells Mrs. Peters, “ ‘He didn’t drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debts. But he was a …show more content…
Wright took matters into her own hands and bought a bird. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discover the cage with a broken door and the bird with a wrung neck. Suddenly, everything makes sense, and they grasp the true motive of Mrs. Wright. Mrs. Hale does not judge her, but rather shows understanding for her position and says, “ ‘If there’d been years and years of nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it would be awful-still, after the bird was still’ ” (924). John Wright likely loathed the bird for its singing, which resulted in its untimely demise. Mrs. Wright, however, loved the songbird. She, in turn, responded to its tragic death by lashing out. John either did not recognize how unhappy his wife had become, or he simply chose to ignore it. Whatever the case, he killed the one thing that had given meaning to her life once more. Since her words had little effect on her husband, Mrs. Wright relayed her displeasure by making sure that John Wright suffered as much as her beloved bird
It is the year 1916, and a local farmer, John Wright, is found with a rope around his neck, dead in his own home. In Susan Glaspell’s one-act play, Trifles, the characters are hard-pressed to discover a motive behind the murder of Mr. Wright. His wife, Mrs. Wright, is a prime suspect in the case. While the men search the house for clues, the women linger in the kitchen. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are able to slowly piece together a possible motive when they take into consideration the fact that John Wright was a hard man, the couple never had any children, and Minnie Wright had a strangled bird in her sewing basket. As the women explore these trifles, they begin to discover how truly isolated Minnie was from the outside world.
John Wright was not a bad man. As Mrs. Hale tells Mrs. Peters, “ ‘He didn’t drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debts. But he was a …show more content…
Wright took matters into her own hands and bought a bird. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discover the cage with a broken door and the bird with a wrung neck. Suddenly, everything makes sense, and they grasp the true motive of Mrs. Wright. Mrs. Hale does not judge her, but rather shows understanding for her position and says, “ ‘If there’d been years and years of nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it would be awful-still, after the bird was still’ ” (924). John Wright likely loathed the bird for its singing, which resulted in its untimely demise. Mrs. Wright, however, loved the songbird. She, in turn, responded to its tragic death by lashing out. John either did not recognize how unhappy his wife had become, or he simply chose to ignore it. Whatever the case, he killed the one thing that had given meaning to her life once more. Since her words had little effect on her husband, Mrs. Wright relayed her displeasure by making sure that John Wright suffered as much as her beloved bird