46 pages • 1 hour read
James ThurberThe Catbird Seat
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1942A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Cigarettes
Mr. Martin buys cigarettes, even though he does not smoke. He intends to use them to throw the detectives off his trail after they find Mrs. Barrows’s body. The cigarettes represent Mr. Martin’s willingness to act out of character in order to resolve the situation with Mrs. Barrows. When he puts them in his coat, he wonders “if they did not represent an unnecessary note of strain” (3). They also represent his apprehension about getting caught. He plans on smoking one of the cigarettes after killing Mrs. Barrows and then stubbing it out in her ashtray. However, if the cigarette makes him choke, or if it takes more time to smoke than he planned on, it could put him at greater risk of being caught.
The Catbird Seat
To be “sitting in the catbird seat” is an idiom meaning to be in a position of superiority; when two people or groups are dealing with each other, sitting in the catbird seat means to have the advantage. In “The Catbird Seat,” Mr. Martin singles out the phrase—often used by Mrs. Barrows—as evidence of her undignified way of speaking. However, before Mr. Martin leaves her apartment, he sticks his tongue out at Mrs. Barrows and tells her that he is sitting in the catbird seat. Mr. Martin does, in fact, spend most of the story sitting in the metaphorical catbird seat.
The idiom is also significant in the very fact of its figurative language. Mr. Martin’s hatred of Mrs. Barrows’s metaphorical turns of phrase has less to do with the so-called “gibberish” than it has to do with Mr. Martin’s intellectual rigidity. For the protagonist, figurative language is a semantic insolence, a departure from the established, efficient system of words’ literal meanings. It is, so to speak, an affront to the filing system of language. With the exception of when he takes on his false persona to fool Mrs. Barrows, Mr. Martin is consistently dry in his diction, contrasting with Mrs. Barrows’s colorful speech. The juxtaposition is symbolic.
Milk
Mr. Martin bookends his ruse with his favorite libation; both before and after he visits Mrs. Barrows’s apartment, he drinks milk. Milk partly represents Mr. Martin’s outward character: bland, unthreatening, and wholesome. It fits Mrs. Barrows’s description of Mr. Martin as a “drab, ordinary little man” (5). However, milk finds its full symbolism in the context of its contrast with alcohol—another juxtaposition between the two main characters. Mrs. Barrows is associated with alcohol in her hospitality to Mr. Martin when he shows up at her apartment. In contrast, when Mr. Martin comes home from Mrs. Barrows’s apartment, his idea of celebratory excess is to have two glasses of milk instead of his usual single glass. Mr. Martin might equate alcohol with hedonism, but the alcohol symbolizes liveliness and freedom from undue restraint, while milk symbolizes firm monotony. The narrative is peppered with repeated phrases like “as usual” and “always,” each time referring to Mr. Martin’s routine life and once referring to his ritual glass of milk.
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