A Blind Eye

Dante Guevara English 1302.2504 November 16, 2010

Dante Guevara ENG 1302.2504 Profile Essay November 16, 2010

Thesis: The event that marked Thurber's life and determined his character to become a famous writer and artist. Audience: The intended audience is my classmates in English 1302 and Mr. Humphreys. Purpose: To understand the world in which James Thurber lived and what made him a famous writer and artist.

A Blind Eye

James Thurber lost sight in one of his eyes in 1901 while playing, with bows-and-arrows with his brother, the William Tell story. This event marked Thurber's life and determined his character to become a famous writer and artist. According to the website Kirjasto, when he was unable to participate in games and sports with other children, he developed a rich fantasy life, which found its outlet in his writings (1). Although, this incident would have made any person with some kind of impediment to make excellent drawings, James Thurber was most noted for his ability to illustrate, through the use of humor, the deficiencies of human beings in a world seemingly overpowered by pressures of their own creation. Thurber's awesome drawings are in abundance with his creation of husbands, wives, dogs, seals, and various species of Thurber's own originality, instinctive creations of which he once said, "I don't think any drawing ever took me more than three minutes" (Story of the Week 1). Thurber was born in Columbus in 1894, during a time when in the United States was happening great changes due to the forces of industrial evolution: explosive urban growth, immigration, labor upheavals, and the dizzying pace of technological ascent (Coker 1). He wore glasses since he was eight and was an obvious target for the usual bullying of boys of his age and was hated because he knew his lessons (Kinney 106). What seems to define his inclination to have a comic talent comes from his mother Mary Thurber, whom was a woman marked by independence of thought and judgment and a cynical joker. Once, she pretended to be a cripple and attended a faith healers revival to abruptly jump up and proclaim herself cured. Thurber attended Ohio State University and established his pace as editor of the school newspaper and literary magazine. Thurber's writing career was established from the start. He took over a job as a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch after World War I, left the U.S. for Europe in the 1920s to write for overseas newspapers, then returned to the United States and

wrote for the New York Post. While living in New York, started working for the New Yorker. Thurber was employed as an associate editor and his articles and sketches benefited the pages of the magazine for years to come and helped set the overall tone for the publication. Thurber's use of comedy to denote human deficiencies took many shapes. His cartoons often characterized people conflicting with the troubles and problems of everyday life, especially in the face of modern technology that often made things more, rather than less, descouraging. He had a prone tenderness regarding dogs and was very talented on assigning human thought to animals and in many occasions placed canines higher than humans in intelligence, loyalty and honesty. Himself had owned seventy two of them in his life time, pronouncing himself the patron saint of dogs (Kinney 243). He always portrayed animals in a compassionate way, delegating their dependency on unpremeditaded wisdom instead of the unclear reasoning of humans. Males were especially targeted for ridicule by Thurber; his cartoons often included spineless husbands being berated by their domineering and opinionated wives. He was a firm believer that humans often unnecessarily complicated their lives through an excess of "abstract reasoning" instead of being practical (Coker 1). Those who knew Thurber as colleague and friend were constantly beneficiaries of his more intimate genius. On social occasions, he could be far more comical than any paid stand-up comedian. In the early 1940s he was very famous and at same time he was almost totally blind, his fame as a writer and artist raised and raised and his eyesight dissipated and dissipated. In the special way Thurber had of seeing his life and the world, the war of the sexes perdured both consequential and troubling to him. The website brainyquote reports in one quote that he said "women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more" (1). He had an intense interest in the nature of gender. He scrutinized and dramatized the difficulties of being women and man and their relationships, and also evoked laughs about the connection 2

between the clash between men and women, like in "The Unicorn in the Garden", the man is the insane of the pair, but through his scheme, his wife ends up being hauled off to an institution, "cursing and screaming" like a maniac, and the husband lived happily ever after (Thurber 1). Thurber is considered one of the century's most brilliant humorous writers, with works that took many shapes over his lifetime, including novels, short stories, articles, and sketches. Cursed with alcoholism, rage and blindness, [...] Thurber's last years were not happy ones for him (emphasis added) (Coker 1). He collapsed from a blood clot on the brain in October 1961, in New York, endured in a comma medical condition for a month after an operation, and died without recovering complete consciousness. His cremated remains were buried near his parents and maternal grandparents in Columbus, Ohio.

Works Cited Coker, Jeffrey W. "James Thurber". St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture. FindArticles.com. 11 Nov, 2010.<http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g1epc/is_bio/ai_2419201213/> Liukkonen, Petri, and Ari Pesonen. James (Grover) Thurber (1894-1961). Finland. 2008. 11 Nov. 2010. <http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/thurber.htm> James Thurber Quotes. 11 Nov. 2010. BrainyQuote.com 2001. < http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/james_thurber_3.html> Kinney, Harrison. James Thurber-His Life and Times. New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc. 1995. The Lady on the Bookcase. Story of the Week.2009. A Project of The Library of America. 11 Nov. 2010. <http://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2010/04/lady-on-bookcase.html> Thurber, James. The Unicorn in the Garden. Literary reading and writing. Brookhaven College, Class materials. Farmers Branch: Fall. Semester:2010. Page 1.