Essay Questions

What makes “The Golden Girl” a perfect choice for inclusion the short story collection Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories Not for the Nervous?

This collection was published as a tie-in to the popular television anthology show Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Much like The Twilight Zone, this anthology is notable for presenting self-contained stories demonstration the conventional concept of irony. That is to say that the stories built toward a dramatic climax that comes in the form of an unexpected twist at the end. “The Golden Girl” is an ideal choice for inclusion in a collection of short stories that also follow the same narrative trajectory with its story of husband and his younger pregnant wife turning out to be unmarried smugglers who both die as a result of trying to maintain their grasp on thirty pounds of gold even in the face of the cruise ship they are on sinking. An equally appropriate choice to have included in this particular collection would have been “The Man Who Met Himself” which ends with an even more spectacular ironic twist at the end.

What common household item in “The Man who Met Himself” is the source of the story’s twist ending?

This murder thriller is a rollercoaster ride taking the reader into territory far removed from the author’s career-defining mysteries set in medieval England solved by Brother Cadfael. The character of Eileen Willard is a femme fatale more suited to the murky boulevards of Los Angeles in the 1940’s. The narrator introduces the reader to her poor sap of a husband, Frank, by admitting he had known the man for several years without really knowing him, thus setting up in the opening lines a thematic layer of dual imagery. This thematic imagery reaches its peak with Frank’s seemingly delusional confession to the murder of Eileen the insistence that while climbing up the stairs with a gun in his hand to her bedroom he was met by a man coming down the stairs with a gun in his hand who looked just like him. The answer to this seemingly inexplicable event involves all wraps up nicely together at the end with a conclusion that involves an oversized Venetian mirror, Eileen’s passion for the mirror, and the identity of the man who gave her the mirror coinciding with the actual murderer.

What makes the ironic ending of “A Grain of Mustard Seed” a twist that is unsuitable for inclusion in the Hitchcock collection?

“A Grain of Mustard Seed” is a story in which the narrator looks back upon the moment that her family was forced into exile from Lahore along with all other Hindus by the Muslim majority. This actual historical event is personalized in the story in an incident in which a close family friend who was a Muslim joined the frothing mob spewing hate toward Hindus by physically and verbally assaulting and abusing the narrator’s father even to the point of going through his pockets and taking his possessions. Only at the end is it revealed this was horrific behavior was all just an act designed to cover up the fact that he was actually transferring a fat wad of cash into his friend’s pocket that comprised basically all his life savings.

The irony of this unexpected reversal of perception cuts as deeply as the endings to the two stories mentioned above, yet while they both would be right at home alongside the other stories in the Hitchcock collection, this story would stick out like a sore thumb. It is too upbeat and offers insight into the human condition that inspires hope and optimism. “The Golden Girl” is a story that ends tragically, but one can be sure that many if not most readers are not terribly upset by it because it fulfills our desire for just desserts too often lacking in real life. And while the ending of “The Man Who Met Himself” can be considered an optimistic one for the same reasons, the irony does nothing to undo the misery that Frank Willard has had to endure and it is he with whom the reader is likely to identify.