Comparison, Button, By Richard Matheson

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Button,Button is a short story by Richard Matheson about greed and selfishness. In the story there are three characters Mr. Steward, Arthur and Norma. Mr. Steward delivers the package which contains the button and he tries to convince Norma to press the button. She becomes curious and greedy wanting to kill someone for 50 thousand dollars while Arthur completely neglects the thought of pressing the button. They both try to convince each other but it doesn’t work and when Arthur sees that Norma is willing to press the button he becomes deeply depressed and commits suicide in turn giving Norma 50 thousand dollars in life insurance money. Arthur and Norma both have very different values and beliefs as Norma believes that it is okay to press the …show more content…

We can see many times when she shows her greed, one of the most obvious ones is when Mr. Stewart tells her that it can prove to be very valuable and she becomes interested and even replied by saying if it has Monetary value. Another thing that she says that proves that she is greedy is when her and Arthur are arguing and she goes to bed she only thinks of the fifty thousand dollars which not only shows greed but also ignorance since she is neglecting the fact that someone will die in order for her to receive that money. Norma proves to be very ignorant in this story as she neglects everything her husband is saying to her and instead just tries to convince him that what she is saying is correct and as we can see this ignorance proves to be fatal as it and her greed cause arthur to become deeply depressed and end his own life. Norma also tries to convince Arthur by telling him that they can use the money that they will receive for murder to the things they always wanted like go to Europe or have The cottage they wanted or even have a baby. When she is about to press the button she justifies so by saying “ for us” which is not true as we …show more content…

When he realises during their final argument that Norma is going to press the button, his hands tremble. By his hands trembling we can come to a conclusion that is was disturbed by the fact that Norma wanted to kill an innocent man so that she could be richer than she is so I believe that the Matheson said that his hands trembled to shows that Arthur was affected by what Norma had said to him during their last argument. The reason that we know that Arthur committed suicide and was not killed by Stewart or anyone that works for him is because we can see that when Norma tears open the box it is empty. Therefore we know that there is no way that Stewart would have known if Norma pressed the button or not and therefore he could not have killed Arthur. Although Arthur is sensitive he is just and would not do anything that goes against his values or beliefs and so Arthur believed that unjust to kill an innocent person for personal gain and he defended that as much as he could but his emotions took him over and caused him to react in a very bad way towards Norma opposing his values and beliefs. I think that Arthur did not have a good reaction to Norma opposing him by committing suicide he has made Norma feel worse than she ever did and he has also taken his own life and made everyone that loved him depressed. Arthur was also very reluctant towards

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