The Unicorn in the Garden
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| Author | James Thurber |
|---|---|
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Fables For Our Time |
| Genre(s) | Fable, short story |
| Released in | The New Yorker |
| Publication type | Magazine |
| Publisher | Harper & Row |
| Media Type | Print (Periodical, Hardback & Paperback) & AudioBook |
| Released | 1939 (magazine), 1940 (book) |
| Preceded by | "The Patient Bloodhound" |
| Followed by | "The Rabbits Who Caused All the Trouble" |
The Unicorn in the Garden is a short story written by James Thurber. The most famous of Thurber's humorous modern fables, it first appeared in The New Yorker on October 31, 1939; and was first collected in his book Fables for Our Time & Famous Poems Illustrated (Harper and Brothers, 1940). The fable has since been reprinted in The Thurber Carnival (Harper and Brothers, 1945), James Thurber: Writings and Drawings (The Library of America, 1996, ISBN 1-883011-22-1), The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales, and other publications. It is taught in literature[1] [2] and rhetoric courses.[3]
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
A husband sees a unicorn in the family garden and tells his wife about it. She ridicules him, telling him the unicorn is "a mythical beast" and calls him a "booby". When he persists, she threatens to send him to the "booby hatch" (the mental institution). He goes back outside, and she summons the authorities. They ask him if he told his wife he had seen a unicorn. He tells them that he has not, because "The unicorn is a mythical beast." Thus they take the wife away instead. The moral of the story is "Don't count your boobies until they are hatched."
[edit] Major themes
As with a number of his stories and cartoons, this one is not so much about unicorns as it is about "the battle of the sexes". The struggle between the husband and wife pits peaceful fantasy (the man) vs. harsh realism (the woman). The moral acknowledges the husband's victory, achieved by a role reversal: the husband stakes claim to the realistic answers expected by the psychiatrist and the police after the wife ironically repeats the husband's earlier fantastic claims.
[edit] Format and style
At 530 words, including the tagline "moral", "The Unicorn in the Garden" qualifies as a short short story, but is generally consistent with the format of a much older literary form, the fable. Fables typically employ anthropomorphic animals as characters, a convention Thurber ignores here, concentrating instead on the reactions of the human husband and wife.
Wordplay, a major element in much of Thurber's work (e.g. the battle over the letter O in The Wonderful O, and the recurring sound effect "ta-pocketa-pocketa" in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty") is seen here in the multiple uses of the words "booby" and "hatch". Parallel construction[4] and repetition of words for comedic effect can be found in the sentence, "They had a hard time subduing her, but they finally subdued her." This is unusual in that such repetition is sometimes discouraged, especially in journalism and formal writing.[5] Although fiction does not necessarily follow the same rules of style, Thurber, a former reporter for the Columbus Dispatch and (briefly) an editor for The New Yorker under Harold Ross, would likely have been aware of such stylistic choices.
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
An animated version of the story was released by United Productions of America in 1953.[6] The cartoon was directed by William T. Hurtz, and was originally intended to be part of a feature based on Thurber's work, to be called Men, Women and Dogs.[7] It was later voted #48 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.
The fable was also adapted to the stage as part of the 1960 revue A Thurber Carnival. The original cast for this portion of the stage production was as follows:
- Paul Ford - Man
- Alice Ghostley - She
- John McGiver - Psychiatrist
- Peter Turgeon - Narrator
- Charles Braswell - Policeman
The fable was animated again as part of the My World and Welcome to It episode "The Night the House Caught Fire", which first aired October 13, 1969. In the episode, William Windom as John Monroe tells the story to his daughter Lydia (Lisa Gerritsen) as his accompanying drawings come to life for the viewer. The episode was written and directed by series creator Melville Shavelson. The animation for the series was by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises.
Also in 1969, a musical adaptation of "The Unicorn in the Garden", composed by Russell Smith, was performed by the Denver Lyric Opera in Denver.[8]
[edit] Other adaptations
An audio adaptation of the story, read by Peter Ustinov, was released by Caedmon in 1986 (ISBN 089845641X).
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Peterson, Daniel C. (2002). Self-grading quiz: The Unicorn in the Garden. Glendale Community College. Retrieved on February 10, 2007.
- ^ Various Essays on James Thurber´s "The Unicorn in the Garden". Department of English, Gymnasium Steglitz Berlin (2005). Retrieved on February 10, 2007.
- ^ Nordquist, Richard (2005-01-02). Passages for rhetorical analysis. English 5730: Rhetoric. Office of Liberal Studies, Armstrong Atlantic State University. Retrieved on February 10, 2007.
- ^ Harvey, Michael (2003). Parallelism. The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing. Retrieved on February 10, 2007.
- ^ Yagoda, Ben (2003). Yagoda Dos and Don’ts for Feature Writing. University of Delaware. Retrieved on February 10, 2007.
- ^ The Unicorn In The Garden. The Big Cartoon Database. Retrieved on January 31, 2007.
- ^ Priceless Gift of Laughter. Time Archive: 1923 to the Present. Time Inc. (1951-07-09). Retrieved on January 31, 2007.
- ^ Young, Allen (2006). Exotic and Irrational: Opera in Denver-1879-2006. Pilgrims' Process, Inc., pg 69. ISBN 978-0-9749597-8-8.
