Button Button

Kendall Singer                                                10/30/14

ELA-7        Period 5

Button Button

In the short story “Button Button” by Richard Matheson, Norma is described as selfish. She is described as selfish because she is always putting her needs before anyone else. For example, when Norma and Arthur received the box with the button, she was very quick to say, “let’s push it.”  She really only cared about receiving the $50,000 and did not acknowledge the fact that if she pressed the button someone in the world would die that she did not know.  Soon after Norma pushes the button, she receives a call from the hospital informing her that her own husband, Arthur had been involved in a subway accident and had died.  Martha was in total shock when she found out that Arthur was the one who would die if she pressed the button, which she did. She wouldn’t have cared if it were a stranger because all she wanted was to have and own all of the things she desired.  As she said, “What if it was some old Chinese peasant ten thousand miles away”(Matheson 3) meaning if that was the person that had died, she wouldn’t mind because she is selfish.