The Macbeth Murder Mystery of James Thurber
Published October 2, 1937 in the New Yorker
Biography of James Thurber
- Born: 8 December 1894
- Birthplace: Columbus, Ohio
- Died: 2 November 1961 (complications from a stroke)
- Best Known As: Author of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
James Thurber's witty short stories and lumpy cartoons were a popular mainstay of The New Yorker magazine in the 1930s and 1940s. A Midwestern boy with an urbane twist, Thurber mixed comical reminiscences of his Ohio childhood with wry observations on modern times and the battle of the sexes.
Thurber's nickname was "Jamie"... He lost sight in one eye in while playing bows-and-arrows with his brothers in 1901; his other eye slowly failed, and by the 1950s he had become legally blind... Thurber died after collapsing from a blood clot on the brain; some sources list it as a brain tumor.
The Story begins with a diehard murder mystery fan who accidentally purchases a copy of Macbeth
At first disappointed because Macbeth was “a book for high school students” when all she wanted was a good detective story, she decides to read it, analyzing as if it were a murder mystery.
After reading it, she meets a man at her hotels, and the two begin to talk. She eventually tells him her ridiculously erroneous observations
- Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were not guilty because it was the obvious choice, Macduff was guilty and he practiced the speech he used when he discovered King Duncan’s body, among many others. Confused, the narrator asks to borrow her copy of Macbeth and began to read it the way she did.
The next morning, the two meet again and he claims that Macduff wasn’t guilty: Lady Macbeth’s father killed the king.
the woman argues that the murderer’s role in the story can’t be that small
he says that the old man Ross enters with in Act II Scene 4 is actually Lady Macbeth’s father, and that he was also one of the witches in disguise. he tells her that he will now read Macbeth and try to solve it, and leaves.
THE END
(cc) photo by Metro Centric on Flickr
(cc) photo by jimmyharris on Flickr
(cc) photo by Metro Centric on Flickr