”Why, Honey?” is a short story in a letter form in wich a concerned mother opens up about his disturbed son. Her son has been acting odd since he was little boy. He gets often the most scaring outbursts and doesn’t seem to be able to tell the truth. The mother tries to contact with his son, but it seems impossible.
Everything started when he was fifteen years old and a neighbour had seen as he and his friend had killed the familys beloved cat with firecrackers. At first, the mother couldn’t absolutely believe what she was hearing. Things started to get even weirder when the mother discovered that his son was lying about normal things with no reason, for example wages and where he had spent his freetime. The mother would ask him where he was last night and he would say he was at the show, and later she would find out that he had been in school dance. Once he told for his mother that he was in a field trip, and even describes all the things he had seen. Turns out, there was no field trip. Why couldn’t he just tell the truth?
As the boy starts to get older he buys a shotgun and a hunting knife which both he keeps in his car, because his mother doesn’t want weapons in the house. Later the mother finds in the trunk of his car a shirt full of blood. Naturally she is shocked. Her sons explains that he had a nose bleed.
The mother is desperate and desides to talk with his son about his lying and askes why does he do that. The son commands his mother to kneel down.
She starts to become anxious when her son becomes a governor. The power in wrong hands is a dangerous weapon and the mother has to change her name, address and phonenumber.
I believe that the mothers concerns are real and the claims are convicing. The bloody shirt couldn’t be because of a nosebleed. He seems to tell obvious in any chance he gets. This is an apparent mark of a pathological liar. His outbursts tells that he is dangerous.
The narrator presents the information in a sinister way by not actually saying what everybody is thinking (he is crazy). She tells facts and doesn’t use exaggerative adjectives and questions many things which makes the text more dramatic. In the final paragraph the narrator wants to find out how the receiver has he reached her and why. In my opinion it seems that the person who she is writing is maybe a friend or a relative. If she had tried so hard, as she says, to keep everything secret, why would he tell all this for a stranger? He must be somebody, who she really trusts.