The Murderer
...generally describes Howard as a person you would rather not be aquainted with. Any feelings toward him in the story are shown in pity of the death of his wife. I would imagine the same sort of feeling toward him would be true if you were to meet Howard. Maybe not only in pity of his dead wife but also in pity of his sorry existence in which reality has less meaning to him than “to wash his hands”… To Howard sex is a taboo and he can hardly imagine the reality of the world today with prostitution, crime and murder practically right at ones doorstep. Howard is brought to face this harsh reality when he one night on his way home from work encounters a prostitute. He is clearly very shocked and upset by this unfortunate meeting. He hallucinates afterwards and is indeed haunted by this image that for him represents the twisted and foreign world that he tries to keep at a distance. Howard’s next confrontation happens when he discovers his wife’s affair with the finding of several love-letters from the boss to his wife. In them he reads vivid descriptions of sexual indulgences. Together with his encounter with the prostitute this discovery just gets too much for Howard. He realizes that he has been living his whole life on a lie. That the world (even his own little world) is not at all the way he made it out to be. He has managed to suppress his natural desires for many years and instead concentrated on other things. Along with his suppression of his natural desires he also builds up a repulsion and aversion of t...