5. This story has a significant emotional crisis and a brutal physical climax. A) Define the crisis and the climax of the story. B) Explain how the author uses suspense to lead to both plot events.

Answer and Explanation:

This question is about the short story "The Wife's Story", by Ursula K. le Guin.

5. This story has a significant emotional crisis and a brutal physical climax. A) Define the crisis and  the climax of the story.

The story is told from the perspective of a werewolf. This female narrates how strange her beloved husband has become over time, and how others from her community have told her there was something in his blood that he inherited from his father. She does not know what it is, and she loves him too much to ask.

The emotional crisis comes when she realizes her husband transforms into a human from time to time, when there is no moon. The climax comes immediately afterward, when she, her sister, and others from the community chase him down to kill him. It is the narrator's sister that does it.

B) Explain how the author uses suspense to lead to both plot events.

The author limits our perception and knowledge when she chooses to narrate the story from a first-person perspective. Not only that, but suspense is skillfully used. The narrator reveals information little by little, at first tricking us into thinking they are all humans. Slowly, she talks of them all sleeping during the day while her husband goes "hunting" in broad daylight. She smells something different in him when comes back from those hunting trips, and even her daughter reacts to his presence with fear. Then she describes his transformation, how all of his hair disappears. She finally calls him a man. All this time, she toyed with us readers, leading us to believe this is a werewolf story when, in reality, it is a "werewolf's story", an inversion to the myth. The wolf who becomes a man is cursed, not the man who becomes a wolf. But she takes her time, confusing readers, building the suspense.