"She was a writing medium. This is what she wrote—"
The opening line of "How it Happened" immediately creates a sense of ambiguity and mystery. For the most part, this is a first-person recollection. The opening and closing lines work in tandem to give this straightforward tale a supernatural tweak. If a reader were to remove this opening line, the story's final line could be very confusing. The revelation at the end is that this story belongs to that sub-genre of fiction in which events are narrated by a dead person. This quote ironically introduces an element of rationality. Even though it asks the reader to believe in the existence of the possibility of contact between the living and the dead, it also presents a logic of its own. That logic erases the natural question of how a dead person can tell a story. It is usually this element of storytelling that creates difficulties with narration by the dead. Even if a reader is resistant to psychic ability, at least the possibility helps to facilitate the suspension of disbelief.
"My old car had the gears as they used always to be in notches on a bar. In this car you passed the gear-lever through a gate to get on the higher ones. It was not difficult to master, and soon I thought that I understood it. It was foolish, no doubt, to begin to learn a new system in the dark, but one often does foolish things, and one has not always to pay the full price for them."
The main character of "How it Happened" is a wealthy man whose story is related through a medium. The story tells of the events which cause his death in an auto accident. This quote is the pivot point on which the tragedy begins. The owner of the car has a chauffeur who is better equipped to drive this new vehicle under tricky situations. Nevertheless, he insists on driving the car himself. This undeserved self-confidence initiates the story's thematic considerations of how class division is not based upon actual differences in intellect and abilities. Even though he knows he his decision is foolish, he is not about to let that self-awareness keep him from exercising his privilege.
"Stanley!" I cried, and the words seemed to choke my throat--"Stanley, you are dead."
He looked at me with the same old gentle, wistful smile.
"So are you," he answered.
The opening line situates the story as coming to the reader second-hand through the assistance of a medium. The reason for this is only revealed at the end. The story the medium is relating in "How it Happened" is of the car owner's tragic exercise of his privilege. Stanley is a person who only shows up at the end. The car owner knew him in college but has not seen him recently. The car has crashed, and the owner hears that his chauffeur is injured. Wreckage surrounds him. Despite this, the car owner does not realize he is dead until Stanley informs him this is the case. The ending is doubly ironic. The man of privilege who is addressed as master by his chauffeur is not even intellectually superior enough to realize he is no longer alive. Secondly, this member of the upper class is entirely dependent upon a lower-class person who works within a field often dismissed as charlatanism to tell his story. Privilege and class have proven not only to be his undoing, but to prove he was never worthy of such privilege.
