Analysis Of Childhood Disappointment In The Utterly Perfect Murder

Marianne Williamson one said, “ As someone who has faced as much disappointment as most people, I’ve come to trust not that events will always unfold exactly as I want, but that I will be fine either way.” Disappointments are hard and frustrating, but we learn and grow from them. Even though there are many different types of disappointment. Authors use childhood disappointment to show how their characters grow and develop from their disappointment. In “The Utterly Perfect Murder” by Ray Bradbury, the disappointment that the character feels is childhood disappointment. Doug, the main character, decides to kill Ralph Underhill because Ralph was not a good friend to Doug. Doug says, “He never came to my house. He never sang up to my early-morning bed or tossed a wedding rice of gravel on the clear panes to call me down to joy and summer days” (Bradbury 21). Doug is forty-eight and still holding on to his childhood disappointment. The author did this to show how Doug hasn’t let go of the past. However, Doug decides not to kill Ralph. Instead,

Lizabeth’s rite of passage begins when she and the other neighbor kids go to Miss Lottie’s house and throw rocks at her marigolds. Afterward, Lizabeth is ashamed of what she had done, “The woman in [Lizabeth] flinched at the thought of the malicious attack the [she] had led” (Collier 113). Lizabeth realizes that what she did was wrong. The climax of the story is also a rite of passage for Lizabeth. After Lizabeth destroyed Miss Lottie’s marigolds, she was embarrassed and felt guilty. Even though Lizabeth destroys the marigolds for a childish reason, because she heard her father crying. She feels compassionate towards Miss Lottie, this feeling of compassion marked the end of her innocence. At the end of the story Lizabeth plants marigolds, this shows how she was able to deal with her childhood