The unicorn in the garden

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The Unicorn in the Garden (English: The Unicorn in the Garden ) is a short story of the US writer James Thurber . Thurber made the illustration of the story himself.

It is one of the most famous of Thurber's modern fables and first appeared on October 31, 1939 in The New Yorker magazine .

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A man sees a unicorn in his front yard and immediately goes to his wife in the bedroom to tell her.

She looks at him sleepily and says: “ The unicorn is a mythical creature. “Then she turns around again. The man goes back into the garden and gives the unicorn a lily to eat. Then he wakes his wife again and says: “ The unicorn has eaten a lily. “But his wife declares him crazy and threatens to bring him into the nuthouse .

The man then goes back into the garden, but the unicorn has disappeared. So he sits down between the roses and falls asleep.

The woman quickly gets up and calls the police and a psychiatrist. The police and the psychiatrist looked carefully at the woman when she said, “ My husband saw a unicorn this morning. “You let her tell more, then the psychiatrist gives the police a sign, they grab the woman and put her in a straitjacket. When her husband returned to the house, the police asked him if he had told his wife that he had seen a unicorn. But he only replies briefly: “ How do you come up with that? The unicorn is a mythical creature! “In response to this statement, the psychiatrist has the heavily abusive woman taken to an institution. But the man lives on happily and happily.

As a moral, Thurber puts the following insight at the end of his story:

“ You shouldn't take a bear's fur to the market until you've tied it to someone. "

Others

The story was made into an animated film by William Hurtz in 1953 and was part of the revue A Thurber Carnival in 1960 . In 1986 she read Peter Ustinov for the radio.

Manfred Triesch writes in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit on the first German complete edition of Thurber's Fables in 1967:

“ At the end of the fable of the unicorn in the garden, Thurber refuses, as in most cases, to draw a moral from La Fontaine or Aesopian. His final remark is a note and a comment, nothing else: “Don't count your boobies before they are hatched”. "

Text output

  • James Thurber: The man who held his breath and other stories . Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn Verlag, 2006. ISBN 3-8218-4566-X .

literature

  • David S. Adams. Teaching Stories for Sociology: The Fables of James Thurber . In: Teaching Sociology 7.4, 1980, pp. 397-408.
  • ME Grenander: Of graver import than history: psychiatry in fiction . In: Journal of libertarian studies 2.1, 1978, pp. 29-44.
  • Andrew S. Jorgensen: James Thurber's little man in the battle of sexes. The humor of gender and conflict . Dissertation, Department of English, Brigham Young University, 2006.
  • Manfred Triesch: About foxes and other people. On the first German complete edition of Thurber's fables . In: Die Zeit , No. 23/1967. (Review with commentary on "The unicorn in the garden".)

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ The level of awareness and use in school lessons is shown, for example, by the fact that the short story is listed in a publication such as the following: Aileen M Carroll. 150 great short stories. Teaching Notes, Synopses, and Quizzes . Walch Publications, 1989 (see pp. 31-32).
  2. ↑ James Thurber: The Man Who Holds Breath and Other Stories
  3. ↑ a b Manfred Triesch: From foxes and other people. On the first German complete edition of Thurber's fables . In: Die Zeit , No. 23/1967.