Question 3, (p. 1135): What are the “trifles” that the men ignore and the two women notice? Why do the men dismiss them, and why do the women see these things as significant clues? What is the thematic importance of these “trifles”? The narrator sets the scene; the cold kitchen of the farmhouse the day after John Wright was found murdered in his own bed with a rope around his neck. Nothing has been touched except a fire has been started on the stove to warm the place a bit for when the sheriff and the county attorney would arrive to access the situation and look for a motive. Mrs. Wright who had been found the morning before just rocking back and forth in the kitchen rocker and pleating her apron that lay on her lap, over and over …show more content…

Mrs. Hale quickly pulled out the bad stiches which made the sheriff’s wife nervous. Since the sheriff and the county attorney had already opened and looked inside the cupboards, the ladies were free to get what they wanted to take to Mrs. Wright. However when they opened the one cupboard they discovered a bird cage, and they noticed right away that the hinge on the door was broken. Mrs. Hale describes Mr. Wright to Mrs. Peters: “he was a hard man, like a raw wind that gets to the bone.” And Mrs. Wright: “like a bird herself, real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and fluttery.” Sitting the cage aside for now they continued to gather things to take to Mrs. Wright back at the jail. Fumbling through her sewing box, they came upon a small box and inside was the dead canary wrapped in silk. The canary’s neck had been wrung similar to the rope that was wrung around Mr. Wright’s neck the day before. The ladies just starred at each other in silence. Mrs. Peters, said “I know what stillness is,” as if she suddenly felt a connection to Mrs. Wright. The ladies scurried about to hide the box with the bird from the men, and they hid it amongst the other items they were taking to Mrs. Wright. The men then came down from up-stairs knowing no more than they did before and still mocking the ladies trifles said; “well, was she quilting it or knotting