Pretty Mouth And Green My Eyes Short Story

959 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Theme relating to relationship

“Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes,” a short work from J. D. Salinger’s Nine Stories, provides a look into the lives of a struggling couple through the eyes of a disgruntled husband. Arthur, Joanie’s drunk and desperate spouse, calls Lee, his old friend, in search of marital advice. As Arthur describes his struggles with his wife, Lee interacts with a mysterious woman. I believe this woman to be Joanie. When Lee’s phone rings, he answers and glances “briefly left, at the girl” laying beside him in bed (Salinger 176). However, when he finds out it is Arthur on the other end of the line, Lee looks “left again, but high this time, away from the girl,” (Salinger 176). This particular action makes Lee seem evasive as though he feels guilty for something. It seems that Lee is avoiding eye contact with the woman beside him …show more content…

He asks Arthur to “get undressed and get in bed, like a good guy [because] Joanie’ll probably be there in about two minutes,” (Salinger 191). Lee’s constant reassurance towards Arthur strikes me as his attempt to change the subject. Arthur complaining about Joanie while Lee lays next to her is surely a very uncomfortable situation. Lee attempts to calm Arthur’s nerves so that he can end the current conversation or simply change the topic of discussion.
Worked up and frustrated, Arthur asks Lee if he can attempt to settle himself down by coming over for a quick drink. Lee replies, “I don’t think you should, Arthur.[...] I mean you’re more then welcome to come, but I honestly think you should just sit tight and relax till Joanie waltzes in,” (Salinger 192). Although he tries to be sly about it, Lee makes it fairly obvious that he would prefer it if Arthur did not show up at his house. This is probably because, if Arthur were to come over, there is a strong chance he would be seeing Joanie a lot sooner than he had originally

Show More
Related

  • Comparing Stories: The Astronomers Wife & The Chrysanthemums

    866 Words  | 2 Pages

    Recently, I saw a movie about female tennis champion – Billie Jean King, and although I have never been into the feminism (neither can I say that I quite understand it), her character woke up some other kind of sensitivity in me. After this – to me significant change – I could not help myself not to notice different approaches of John Steinbeck and Kay Boyle to the similar thematic. They both deal with marital relationships and it was quite interesting to view lives of ordinary married couples through both “male” and “female eyes”. While Steinbeck opens his story describing the Salinas Valley in December metaphorically referring to the Elisa’s character, Boyle jumps directly to Mrs. Ames’s inner world. Although both writers give us pretty clear picture of their characters, Boyle does it with more emotions aiming our feelings immediately, unlike Steinbeck who leaves us more space to think about Elisa Allen.

    Read More

  • Rewrite of the last chapter Of Mice and Men

    695 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lennie continued his thoughts aloud, “George gonna wish he was alone an’ not have me botherin’ him. I could just go up to them mountains and find a cave.” He continued, sadder now, “ -an’ never have no ketchup- but I won’t care. If George don’t want me... I’ll go away. I’ll go away.”

    Read More

  • Similarities Between Courage And To Kill A Mockingbird

    535 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lee creates a comical tone in To Kill a Mockingbird when Scout uses curse words at unnecessary times. “But at supper that evening when I asked him to pass the damn ham please, Uncle Jack pointed at me,” (Lee 90). This comical tone shows Scout’s imaturity. The tone aids in the development in her character, while continuing to lighten the mood for

    Read More

  • The Vulnerability of Innocent Characters in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men

    546 Words  | 2 Pages

    Due to child like qualities, Lennie is a person which would be easy prey and a vulnerable person. Lennie is a vulnerable person who is quite dumb. His has an obsession for touching soft thing and this will often lead him in to trouble. But poor Lennie is an innocent person who means no harm to anybody. When he and Curley get into a fight Lennie is too shocked to do any thing. He tries to be innocent but, when told to by George grabs Curley’s fist and crushes it. George is Lennie’s best friend and Lennie does every thing he tells him to do as demonstrated in the fight with “But you tol...

    Read More

  • Edgar Allan Poe Obituary

    1737 Words  | 4 Pages

    Some believe that Annabel Lee was written for his wife, but others think that the love of his life, Sarah Emira Royster, that he was parted from as a youth of 18, was the true recipient for the beautiful but morbid poem. . Mr. Poe was scheduled to wed the same Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton just days before his death. “The significance of “Annabel Lee” to their relationship may, however, be reflected in the account of his desire to have it published for the first time with their wedding announcement in the local papers. Since Poe died just ten days before they would have been married, the poem was instead first printed at the end of his obituary written by Rufus Griswold in the New York Daily Tribune” (Poe Museum)

    Read More

  • Harshness and Cruelty in Streetcar Named Desire

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    told Allan "I saw,  I know, you disgust me…"( p.96). To Allan, Blanche seemed to

    Read More

  • Importance of Water in The Awakening

    1462 Words  | 3 Pages

    Edna and Robert are at the beach enjoying each others company at first. They quickly return to the cottage where Leonce is and he talks to them. They have had a good time down by the water and Leonce, being the proper business like man that he is does not understand why Robert would rather spend his time chatting with his wife than attending to other things. It is obvious to the reader that Edna and Robert have a connection and are amused with what the other has to say. Leonce shrugs this off as nothing and leaves for the hotel where many of the men chat and drink in the evenings. Edna and Robert talk some more and eventually part. These are the first signs of something special between them.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in The Things They Carried

    710 Words  | 2 Pages

    Many of the short stories within the collection The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, can be compared and contrasted in regards to elements including theme, characters, and technique. In “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” the character Mary Anne Bell appears to be apparently similar to the character Martha from “The Things They Carried,” in that both are young women who have relations with a soldier in the war. Though upon further analysis of Mary Anne, it appears she is far from alike to Martha. Rather, an unexpected parallel can be drawn between the characters Mary Anne and Elroy Berdahl, from “On the Rainy River,” in that both appear to be epitomes of masculinity. The peculiar connection between these characters developed by Tim O’Brien shines a light on the ambiguity of conventional gender roles of men and women.

    Read More

  • Comparing Chapters 1 and 6 in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

    620 Words  | 2 Pages

    that he wants to tend. Lennie has been shot by George in the back of

    Read More

  • How Margaret Fuller and Fanny Fern Used Writing as a Weapon For Women's Rights

    1225 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Aunt Hetty on Matrimony and The Working Girls of New York Fanny Fern depicted a story of sadness and morose conditions that women had to deal with in order to have a parallel recognition to that o...

    Read More

  • Comparison of Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee and The Raven

    394 Words  | 1 Pages

    In "Annabel Lee", a young man is mourning the death of a beautiful young lady. Even though the woman had died quite some time ago, the man is still in melancholy. He misses her terribly and constantly thinks of how she was she was tragically taken from him by the angels who were jealous of their love, and by her family who didn't think the he himself was capable of bringing her to her final resting place. He loved Annabel Lee more than anyother human can love another. The following quote tells the reader how much he loves her and shows that he would do anything for her, even if that means sleeping by her tomb, each and every night. "And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side of my darling, my life and my bride, in her sepulchre there by the sea, in her tomb by the side of the sea."

    Read More

  • Their Eyes Were Watching God Language Analysis

    558 Words  | 2 Pages

    Janie Crawford, the protagonist, a woman who dreams, hopes and imagines for true love and happiness. Aiming to achieve her dreams and hopes she learned about love and happiness from different men she married. Marrying Logan, Janie learned that marriage can’t just be arranged and one must devote a great deal of attention to have a happy marriage. Marrying Joe, she learned that both partners must have equal respect to each other in order to be happy. From Janie’s last husband, Tea Cake, she learned that with him she found true love and happiness, finally getting the equal respect she deserve. In the novel “ Their Eyes Were Watching God, “ Zora Neale Hurston used figurative language to make a statement about love and happiness.

    Read More

  • A&P by John Updike and Araby by James Joyce

    847 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the short story A&P by John Updike, the story is told in a first person narrative of a teenage boy working as a cashier in an A&P grocery store on a hot summer day. The story begins with the teenage boy named Sammy becoming preoccupied by a group of three teenage girls that walk into the grocery store wearing bathing suits. Sammy admires the girl's beauty as most nineteen year old adolescent boys would, in a slightly lewd and immature nature. His grammar is flawed and he is clearly not of an upper-class family, his job appears to be a necessity for a son of a family that is not well off. The name he gives the girl who seems to be the object of his desire, Queenie, portrays a social difference from himself. Sammy further imagines the differences in class and living style when he describes Queenie's voice as "kind of tony, the way it ticked over 'picked up' and 'snacks'." He imagines her with aristocratic home life in describing “her father and the other men were standing around in ice-cream coats and bow ties and the women were in sandals picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a big glass plate and they were holding drinks the color of water with olives and sprigs of mint in them."Sammy compares his own parents occasions, where they serve their guests "lemonade and if it's a real racy affair Schlitz in tall glasses with 'They'll Do It Every Time' cartoons stenciled on."

    Read More

  • The Birthday Party

    527 Words  | 2 Pages

    In a subtle way, Brush also makes the wife’s actions selfish. Even though her husband was wrong to react in the way that he did, she was also selfish in her actions. Clearly, her husband has a shy personality because “he was hotly embarrassed” (13) in front of “such few people as there were in the restaurant” (11). Using a couple of this age (“late thirties” (1)), Brush asserts that the wife should have known her husband’s preferences and been sensitive to them. The author also uses the seemingly opposite descriptions the couple: “There was nothing conspicuous about them” (5) and the “big hat” (4) of the woman. The big hat reveals the wife’s desire to be noticed.

    Read More

  • Essay On Bdm

    1119 Words  | 3 Pages

    Lee starts to take more pride in her appearance and her demeanor as she is aroused by the domination progress and begins to rely on it on a day to day basis. Sadomasochism becomes Lee’s whole life, it controls her.

    Read More

More about Pretty Mouth And Green My Eyes Short Story

Open Document