Male Plane

Chris was a plane driver, or pilot, whatever. And Carmichael was a mail man. This made me think of this joke from The 3 Amigos.. it has nothing to do with the story.

How I Met My Husband

Anyways, I am answering number five.. "Evaluate Chris Watters as a potential husband for Edie. Does her evaluation of him differ from the reader's?"

In my second reading I made this list of reasons why I should have seen it coming.. or reasons why Chris would make a terrible husband.

When he is introduced in paragraph 33, I automatically assumed.. Wow, what a dumb story. We all know this is who she ends up marrying.

But he is such a creep! Paragraph 55: "...good thing I'm used to shy ladies" or "...ladies dropping in on me".

In paragraph 86, he admits to Mrs. Peebles that "he couldn't settle down to ordinary life"- that should have caught my attention the first run-through. If he can't live ordinarily, then he isn't going to get married.

And the final card-paragraphs 140-145.. he basically molests her, which isn't a good sign of forming a long-term relationship. That's so disgusting.

Chris is not a good potential husband for Edie.

But she looks past it all. She always references her old friend Muriel Lowe.. and how they used to dream of love and romance. She was blind to that in Chris.. that's all she wanted, so that's all she could see. Thank God he didn't write her a letter.

But that got me thinking about Chris' real role. I think he was the same as Gregor in Metamorphosis. He didn't make any big change. He caused the big change. If he hadn't promised Edie that he'd write her, then she would have never sat out and waited by the mailbox.. so she wouldn't have married the mailman.