The Price of Morality: A Literary Analysis Essay

Literary Analysis of Button, Button and The Chaser

By Fall 2023 Literary Analysis Fast-Paced Students

Can money buy love and happiness? Those questions are at the heart of Button, Button by Richard Matheson and The Chaser by John Collier. In Button, Button, we meet Norma and her husband Arthur, who are given the choice to push a button on a mysterious box. They know only that somewhere, someone they do not know will die, and in exchange they will receive a fortune. Meanwhile, in The Chaser, Alan seeks to purchase a love potion from an old man, which works exactly as promised and makes the object of his desire fall obsessively in love with him. The price is cheap compared to another, which will simply undo any past regrets or mistakes. Though both Richard Matheson and John Collier characterize their protagonists as common adults simply wanting to gain a bit of happiness, their clever use of foreshadowing allows the reader to ultimately see that greed and obsession alter Norma and Alan’s perception of right and wrong.

Norma lives during a time when women are homemakers, and their husbands provide for the family. She simply wants the stereotypical lifestyle that everyone around her lives, even though she and her husband cannot afford it. “I’d like for us… to have a nicer apartment, nicer furniture, nicer clothes, a car,” she says to her husband as she pleads her case for wanting to push the button and receive $50,000 (pg. 8). This shows that Norma is jealous of the life she and Arthur cannot currently afford, and that if only they had the money, their lives would be perfect. For Norma, money is the key to her happiness, even if it comes at the cost of someone else’s life.

The author cleverly uses foreshadowing to show how obsessive Norma becomes with pushing the button to gain her happiness on page 5. He describes a scene where Norma returns home from work and discovers the package containing the button unit by the front door. While she attempts to act disgusted, Norma ultimately picks “up the package and carries it into the kitchen, leaving it on the table” (pg. 5). This act, followed by Norma moving the button unit from place to place instead of getting rid of it as she once intended, signals to the reader that Norma will ultimately make the choice to push the button, even though doing so is morally wrong. Norma’s greed outweighs her ethics. While her husband views pushing the button as murder, Norma sees the button as a shortcut to the life she feels she should be living.

In John Collier’s The Chaser, Alan Austen is a shy, nervous man in love with Diana, a woman who does not love him back. He simply wants her to return his heartfelt adoration with the same depth of emotion, even though he is not a rich man and may not have much to offer. Alan is “overwhelmed with joy” when he discovers he can purchase a love potion for merely one dollar, considering the old man has other, more expensive potions (pg. 3). “It would be no good charging that sort of price for a love potion, for example. Young people who need a love potion very seldom have five thousand dollars. Otherwise, they would not need a love potion.” (pg. 2). The old man implies that a young person who is rich would not need a love potion, because his wealth would be attractive for many women. Considering Collier’s story was published in 1940, just as the United States began to emerge from the Great Depression, it makes sense that most adults realize the importance of money and the necessities it provides. If Alan had enough money, he wouldn’t need a love potion–Diana would already return his affections. Therefore, Alan feels he is merely taking a shortcut he can afford by using the potion to gain Diana’s love and devotion.

Foreshadowing helps plant clues about events that will happen one day in the future, and the old man’s talk of the life cleaner is a sign that Alan’s view of love will not last. The old man says the potion will make his beloved completely devoted to him, to an all-consuming degree. Yet the old man also refers to “the glove-cleaner, or life-cleaner, as I sometimes call it,” consistently referring to its price of “five thousand dollars, never a penny less” because “one has to be older than you are, to indulge in that sort of thing. One has to save up for it.” (pg. 3). By listing the specific effects of the potion, the reader can see Alan's view of love is unsustainable in the long run, and that he will one day be back to get himself out of the mess he is about to create. The old man has built his business on satisfied return customers, and Alan is about to become one of them. Based on the foreshadowing clues used by the author, Alan will someday return to undo the effects of the love potion.

Both Norma and Alan seek some of the most fundamental necessities in life: a home, family, love. Yet in their desire to find a shortcut to happily ever after, their morality takes a backseat. Norma wants to live in the suburbs, raising her kids while her husband goes to work, a life she cannot afford. She is willing to justify murder to reach her dreams. Alan’s story takes place at a time when money is scarce, but love is a priceless ideal. Yet he will take away a woman’s freedom to choose whom she wishes to love by using a potion that he will ultimately seek to one day undo with a poison which will end her life.

Both authors have created characters who seek their dreams through a distorted path, using similar literary devices to showcase the same ethical dilemma: Is murder an acceptable price to pay for temporary happiness? For these characters, their greed and obsession have overtaken their sense of what it means to be a moral human being.

Literary Analysis Color Coding

Thesis Statement: Appears in your introduction and has two parts, a story element (setting, characterization, plot, conflict…) and a literary device (irony, personification, foreshadowing, metaphor, simile…) which then ties to a central theme both authors are trying to show. There is also a separate paragraph where you explain how both stories showcase this statement.

Claim: The claim you are making as it relates to your thesis. This is where you take one story and break down one of the story elements or literary devices.

Evidence: The quotes from the story, with page numbers, that you use to support your claim.

Reason: The explanation you give about why the evidence supports your claim.

Filler: Transitions, summaries, introductions, and conclusions to fill out your complete essay.