Born of Man and Woman free essay sample

The author of the story under discussion is Richard Matheson, an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. â€Å"Born of Man and Woman†, a 1950 short story by Richard Matheson, is about a young child, born an ugly creature, who is kept chained in the basement by its parents and frequently beaten. The key of the story is horrific, since the author depicts terrifying and chilling scenes of the child`s miserable life, the hatred and cruelty of adults and the tragedy of a little boy. The story is written in the form of a diary of the main protagonist, a young boy, who is outcasted by a man and a woman who gave him a birth. The author uses indirect methods of characterization through his parent`s description: â€Å"you retch she said†, â€Å"Mother so pretty and me decent enough. Look at you he said and didnt have the nice face†. We will write a custom essay sample on Born of Man and Woman or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Being beaten by his parents, the boy excretes green liquid: I spilled some of the drip on the floor from one arm. It was not nice. It made ugly green on the floor, thus we find out that he is not quite s human creature, the facts that he has got more than one pair of legs and can run on the walls maintain this idea: I will screech and laugh loud. I will run on the walls. Last I will hang head down by all my legs and laugh and drip green all over until they are sorry they didnt be nice to me and My legs slip on them because I dont walk on stairs. My feet stick to the wood. The abrupt and broken sentences enlarge the characteristics of the protagonist, for example, such metaphors and similes: water falling from upstairs, the ground it sucked up the water like thirsty lips. It drank too much and it got sick and runny brown (about the rain) as well as the metaphors: goldness in the upstairs (about the sun), little mother and little father (about children), The big machine swallows them and rolls out past and is gone (about the bus) reveal the fact that the boy is uneducated and undeveloped, but in spite of this he remains curious. He is able to pull his chain out of the wall and is able to observe what happens outside, in the real world, through a little basement window. Being a child though, he needs love and to be loved. Notwithstanding the hatred of his parents he still loves them and such sentences manifest to this idea: Mother is a pretty I know, Mother so pretty, he likes laugh and wants to play with other children: I like to know why there are laughs for†¦. I hear the laughing some more. I talk to the sound and look through to the people. †¦ I thought I should laugh with them and later: I heard little laughs very high. I looked out the window. I saw all little people like the little mother and little fathers too. They are pretty. These facts reveal that protagonist, despite his physical ugliness and abnormality, is still a human being, with all its needs and emotions. But any creature, being treated awfully and cruelly, becomes violent and fierce itself. Thus the horrible culmination of the story comes then the child relates an incident where his young sister (which he refers to as a â€Å"little mother†) comes to see him in the basement with her pet. When the pet smells him and attacks him, he crushes it to death. The last diary entry takes place after a beating from his father. As the child is going over the events in his mind, we learn that he knocked the stick from his father’s hand and made some noises. Then, he begins to ponder over some tactics to use if his parents do not treat him better in the future.