Trifles John Hossak Analysis

The case of John Hossak is incredibly mysterious and is a mystery that was never completely solved. Due to the inherent mystery of the case there were many different books, stories, and plays based of it. One of these is “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell. The plot of this play is essentially the same as the case; however, fundamental differences can be found within the two, as well as trivial details, such as names. Within this report you will find a comparative analysis between “Trifles” and the case of John Hossack. In “Trifles” there are a great amount of similarities as in the case of John Hossack; however the most major comparisons are; the place and time that John Hossack or in “Trifles,” John Wright, was murdered. In both the case and in “Trifles” the wife of the murdered man was the one that was convicted of the murder. Within “Trifles” John Wright, the man who was portrayed as John Hossack was murdered by a hanging in the middle of the night while he was asleep (Glaspell 254). This is also stated within the writing about the case of John Hossack in “John Hossack | Iowa Cold Cases.” In this writing on the case it says “Right around midnight on a moonlit night between Saturday, Dec. 1, …show more content…
The two most evident are the weapons used to murder John Hassock, or John Wright, and in the evidence that shows why the wife killed her husband. There are similarities between the way that the man was murdered in “Trifles” and in the actual case; however there is a difference in the weapon used to murder the man ("John Hossack | Iowa Cold Cases”). In the actual case a John Hassock took ax blows to the head, this is evident in the writing on the case in “John Hossack | Iowa Cold Cases.” In “Trifles” it was different because the John Wright, the man portraying John Hossack was hung by rope. This is evident when Glaspell writes “‘He died of a rope around his head’, says she” (Glaspell