Button, Buton By Richard Matheson Sparknotes

If you had a button and everytime you pushed it you got $50,000 but someone you didn’t know died, would you do it? What if instead of it being someone you didn’t know it was someone you knew, then would you still do it? Well in the short story Button, Button by Richard Matheson the 2 main characters experience that situation. Throughout this story, Matheson uses red herrings to convince us that something good will come out of the climax, but instead, a tragic event happens. Red herrings are used many times throughout this book to try to throw readers off track. Throughout this chapter you will hear about places that Matheson used red herrings and why they are important.

In the beginning of the book, when Matheson described the package as

Steward was leaving he left the couple his business card but it didn’t stay in 1 piece for long, because as soon as he was gone, “Arthur tore it in half and tossed the pieces onto the table”(Matheson, 105) This showed that Arthur knew it was not a good idea, to begin with, and that something bad was going to come out of it. As Arthur kept trying to convince Norma that pushing the button was a terrible idea, the hints, and clues that Matheson gave us made us think that Norma would, but wouldn’t tell Arthur. Arthur was trying super hard to convince Norma that pushing the button would be a terrible idea because it could bring them apart. As they were arguing, what Matheson had them talking about to each other about the button had it seem like their relationship was falling apart. When Norma said, “if it’s someone you’ve never seen in your life and never will see, someone whose death you don’t even have to know about, you still wouldn’t push the button?”(Matheson, 108) the clues that came out of it had me thinking that if Norma were to push the button it might be someone she knew or thought she

Norma thought that if they were to push the button they could use the money to go on a trip they dreamed about and buy a cottage on an island. At this part, Matheson had me thinking that they would push the button and go to places they want to visit and buy things they want to have. But when Norma gave her big speech to Arthur the way she said certain words gave hints or clues that threw me off. Once Arthur left the table, that gave me a hint of what might happen next. Than when Norma hit the button and a “chill of thunder swept across her,”(Matheson, 110) that was a clue that something bad had happened or is going to happen. In the end, when Norma found out that she had killed her husband from pushing the button, she couldn’t breathe. When she called Mr. Steward he seemed surprised to have a call from him but what Mr. Steward said back to Normal after she asked him a question was a real shocker. When Norma said “You said I wouldn’t know the one that died” and Mr. Steward replied “My dear Lady, do you really think you knew your husband?” that left me in shock because from the hints that Matheson gave, I thought that if one of the Lewis’s were to die it would be Norma because she wouldn’t listen to her husband and really was only thinking about