Intertextuality between Shirley Jackson’s What a Thought and Cahrles Fish’s Scrabble

Similiarities

1. Both of them are in marriage

2. Live in USA
3. It has desire to kill
4. They describe the killing in their minds
5. They are in the household in a long time
6. The target of killing are still alive
7. They hold the killing desire.

Diffrences

1. WAT : The woman (Margaret) has desire to kill her husband

S : The man has desire to kill his wife
2. WAT : It was calm and cold atmosphere
S : it was annoying and hot in the atmosphere
3. WAT : The motive of the killing is because the wife was bored in her marriage
S : The motive of the killing is because the man hated his wife to play the scrabble instead to
let the man went outside.
4. WAT : it was happening in the evening
S : It was happening in the sunny day
5. WAT : the woman (Margaret) still alive in this story
S : Unfortunately, the man was killed and choked by the letter "B" while chewing it.
6. WAT : There was an inner conflict of Margaret in the decision to kill his husband.
S : The man went on to play the scrabble with his wife in anger.

Check the hypogram & interpreting while u can

Hypogram
1. Expansion
WAT
It tells about a wife that has a boredom life with her marriage for 10 years. She had a wild
thouhgt to kill her husband to solve her boredom. Like smashing her husband’s head with a
ashtray, hang him with a rope of window, drown his head with a water of aquarium. Then
she had an inner conflict to kill or stop her tought, and decided to stop it strickly.

S
It tells about a man disappointed playing scrabble with his wife. Instead of letting her
husband went out, she asked her husband to play the scrabble together. The man was
annoyed and played the scrabble with anger. He chewed some letters and put the mean
word in the gameplay. It was an epic game, and the wife put the letter word in the game
with the massive point and make him died of suffocation with a letter of “b.”

2. Conversion
WAT
 Margaret has a wild tought to kill his husband. She got an inner conflict of killing the
husband or not. Finally she decided to hold her tought strickly.

S
The man was annoyed by his wife, playing scrabble together in the fierce game, chewing
some letter and died of suffocation of the letter.

3. Modification
WAT & S
The woman modified into a man as a main character
The cold and calm atmosphere modified into a sunny and anger one
The boredom modified the hatred

Interpreting
In What a thought, the main problem of the story was started by the boredom and in
Scrabble the hatred was the source of the problem. It is a contradictary for the 2
atmosphere in the story (the cold atmosphere vs the heat atmosphere). Both story has the
contradictary in atmosphere and the motives of the killing.