Norma's Button Literary Devices

The Belgian-American poet May Sarton once said, “the moral dilemma is to make peace with the unacceptable.”Adding on to Sarton, moral dilemmas challenge an individual's righteous honor. In the short story “Button Button,” Norma feels conflicted about pushing the button. She faces the various stages of a moral dilemma: moral awareness, moral decision-making, moral intent, and moral action. The first stage of the moral dilemma she faces is moral awareness. Although Norma struggles to appreciate the ethical aspects of one's decision, we vaguely see signs of this. For instance, when Arthur tells Norma: she would murder someone if she pushes the button. Norma feels disgusted when hearing the word murder. Arthur’s words force her to reflect on

Norma may think she’s making a noble decision, but that’s the complete opposite. To demonstrate, Mr. Steward offers to take back the button unit, but Norma declines. Norma doesn’t understand that keeping the button is immoral. Her intuition is telling her the button is righteous when it’s the opposite. She’s unconsciously blocking the harmful aspects of the button when keeping the button. There is this fear of being wrong which scares Norma. Nobody wants to admit they're wrong due to the shame society brings which is how Norma feels. Not to mention her brain isn’t helping by feeding her the harmful idea that keeping the button is beneficial. Her brain is the main benefactor that’s killing her righteousness. To add on, Arthur asks Norma if she wants to kill someone, and she says, "if you don’t even know the person” (Pg 108). Norma’s certain the button has no harm because she will kill a stranger and doesn’t have to carry the pain of loss. She has a gut feeling telling her that the consequences don’t matter because she won’t be affected by them. It doesn’t matter how diabolical her decisions are because she will always see them with a sympathetic eye. She views them like that because it’s her instinct creating these behavior and she doesn’t want to challenge her instinct. Her instinct forces her to listen to emotion rather than reason. Another instance of this is when Norma pushes the button and tells herself she’s doing it for her and Arthur. Unfortunately, Arthur pays the price for Norma’s greed by dying. By pushing the button she believes she’s reached an ethical conclusion. However, she’s attempting to justify this action by saying she’s doing this for her and Arthur. To a third party, this action is unjustifiable and nefarious. She holds this self-serving bias which makes her oblivious to the harsh reality of the button. When Arthur dies, she snaps out of it