Question

Based on the story of Ursula Le Guin's "The Wife's Story", reread lines 120-131. With a small group, discuss why the wolves killed "the man thing." Do you think this was the right thing to do? Support your opinion with details from the story.

Answer 1

In Ursula Le Guin's "The Wife's Story" readers witness how a pack of wolves kill "the human thing".

From the perspective of a mother, one may understand that it was a necessary thing to do rather than the right one. As we can see in the text itself, the "human thing" was behaving in a very aggressive manner, trying to attack and kill his own children with a branch from a tree. Being left with no other choice, wolves, being predators by nature, protected the cubs and killed the attacker thus depriving him of any chances to repeat his violent actions in future.

As humans, we detest murder as a way of punishment or revenge, but in the given story we deal with wolves, and such behaviour is understandable from their perspective, moreover, one can clearly see that this was done only for protection.