What
called my attention is that Mr. Foster was given a position of power in the
marriage. Dahl describes a discipline that speaks of the power that men
had over their wives in those times. Mrs. Foster is mentioned many times,
but her first name in the story is never mentioned - it is always referred to
her as Mrs. Foster. In contrast, he does mention her husband’s first name, Mr.
Eugene Foster.
Mrs.
Foster is described as an unhappy lady and a poor woman who had developed a
great yearning to set eyes on her grandchildren. By this, the reader can deduce
that she is not happy with the life she serving his husband and showing always
respect to him although he tortured her. Her biggest desire is to meet her
grandchildren, and her husband had agreed to let her go alone to Paris, but he
could change his mind from one moment to another. Here is showed again the
power of Mr. Foster over his wife.
In
conclusion, what called most my attention in connection with the Foster couple
is the power that is demostrated along the story of Mr. Foster over his wife,
but which at the end she tears apart.
2. Was
Mrs. Foster right to want to live in Paris? Should husbands and wives always go
away together?
She had all the rights to
desire to live with her grandchildren and her daughter, but she thought that
desiring that while her husband was still alive wasn’t loyal. She was also
right, because her husband tortured her.
I don’t think couples should
always go away together, because if they aren’t going to cheat on each other,
there should be no problem. By the way, I think couples should always have time
for themselves, because in that way they can relax and then be more tolerant
with each other.
3. When
did she find the chance to get rid of him?
After realizing that her
husband is intentionally cruel with her, she runs to the house to get him. As
she inserts her key into the lock, she was about to turn it—and then she
stopped. She was analyzing the sounds that were coming from the house. Mrs.
Foster “analyzes” the noises and hurries to the car without her husband. In that
moment, she realized that her husband had used the elevator, which had suddenly
stuck. There is when she got the chance to get rid of him.
4. What
evidence does the writer give us to show us she was no longer that poor
independent woman?
The evidence that the writer
gives us is when she makes a decision by her one. The decision she makes is to
go alone to the airport and deciding that her husband could go alone to the
club. Since the moment she goes alone to the airport, it can be noticed that she
feels wonderful making her ones decisions. She also makes decisions by her one
when she is coming back home alone from the airport. The last – but not least- decision
made by her to show that now she has power over her own decisions, is to sit on
her husband’s desk while waiting someone came to repair the elevator.
5. Did
you expect that ending?
It would be better to say,
that I didn’t expect that way of murder. The title says ‘’the way up to
heaven’’, so, any reader that paid a little attention to the title, would
deduce that somebody is going to Heaven, meaning that somebody is going to die.
I didn’t guess that Mr. Foster
was already dead while she was in Paris with her grandchildren. It was not
until the last paragraphs where it described her way back to home, when I
realized that she had left him inside the stuck elevator. Although I knew that
in the end Mrs. Foster was going to take her revenge with Mr. Foster, I could
have never guessed the way she did it.
6. The
story revolves around the following themes:
a- Revenge
Her husband had been cruel with her, torturing
her with time deadlines. She always says nothing to her husband, but when she
gets the chance, she can finally get rid of him, leaving him alone in the
elevator to starve to death.
b- Contradiction
between desires and duties
She did not really wish to
live out her days in a place where she could not be near her grandchildren but
she knew that it was wrong and disloyal to have thought like these while her husband
was still alive. She realizes that her wishes and desires cannot be fulfilled
while her husband is still in her life. Her motivations and duties are contradictory,
because she has to loyal to her husband while sacrificing her own desires, but
at the same time she feels that she must do something to fulfill her duty to
herself. That duty is to please her desires.
c- Pathological
fears
Mary Maloney had a
pathological fear being late, which is used by her husband for torturing her. It
turns to be that her fear is the ruler of how the story is developed. At the
end, it’s easy to notice that her fear has diminished, because now she has the
total control of her time schedules.
7. The way up to
heaven has, among others, the element of IRONY. Analyze the title.
The title is ironic, because the
way up refers to the fact that, when Mr. Foster had taken the elevator to
go to the second floor (the second floor is the way up), he got stuck. There he
would stay until his wife arrived to find him dead, since he had died of
starve.
