The family had a car and also a caravan that they took on their luxurious holiday vacations. Their nice suburban home had a swimming pool in the backyard for the son and his playmates. The family was definitely going to have their happily ever after. They were protected against fire, flood, and theft and were warned by the husband’s mother to never take anyone off the streets. The neighborhood watch committee gave them a plaque that said “YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED” and they placed at their gate.
Although they had all the protection that they needed, the wife still felt concerned about an intruder coming in. She imagined one of the other kinds wondering into their neighborhood, tearing off their plaque, and breaking into their home. In the story her husband explained to her, “These people were not allowed into the suburb except as reliable housemaids or gardeners, so there was nothing to fear.” Since the wife was still dissatisfied and the husband would do anything to make her happy, he had controlled gates fitted to protect his family. The little boy thought of the gate as a toy and often used the speaker as a walkie-talkie while playing cops and robbers.
Although the family was protected by the expensive, high tech fence, the wife still felt as though they needed more security. She thought of someone coming into their home through a window and wanted burglar bars on every window. When doing so she didn’t think about the effect that burglar bars had on her fire security. If there was a fire in the home and the family couldn’t make it to a door, the windows were then too not assessable. The burglar bars helped the family in one aspect, but could have harmed them in another. While sleeping with the little boy, the cat often climbed into his window setting the alarm off. More and more houses begun to get broken into and that made the wife even more nervous. Alarms sounded everywhere in the neighborhood and she knew that the alarm system wasn’t enough. She was not comfortable in her on home.
Housemaids and gardeners became unemployed because their employers didn’t trust them, so they hung around the streets drunk or begging for a job. This part of the story tells us about how high the people in this neighborhood thought they were. They couldn’t trust their workers and they wondered their streets even after getting fired. They knew that they had the upper hand, but the thought of being robbed and/or killed pondered their brains and they couldn’t take a chance with these lower class people.
The wife hated to see anyone go hungry and thought about giving food out to the poor people, but her trusted housemaid said they were “loafers” and that they would come and harm her. The husband agreed so she didn’t give out the bread and tea.
The husband brought the son’s tricycle into the house every night. Even though their house was fully secured, an intruder would still be able to climb over the wall into the yard. So the father’s mother paid for them to get their wall bricked higher as a Christmas gift. During the story the wife referred to her mother in law as the “wise old witch.” I think she did so because even though her suggestions were helpful it only leads her into a deeper destruction. So on the little boy played with his newest toy in his Space Man outfit.
As the family went for a walk one afternoon they noticed how different their neighborhood was. They didn’t stop to admire things that once were, but instead looked at the different systems and houses that had been broken into. Every week there was more intrusions, even during broad daylight. That scared the family so that they had to take more precautions to keep their family safe. Then they noticed that the cat could still so easily jump their seven foot wall and decided that they needed something so great that it would keep outsiders away once and for all. Both the husband and wife thought of something that was so gruesome that no one would be able to