SOURCE: Underwood, Karen. “Mason's ‘Drawing Names.’” Explicator 48, no. 3 (spring 1990): 231–32.

In the following essay, Underwood compares the husbands and boyfriends in Mason's short story, “Drawing Names” to the biblical three Wise Men.

In her short story “Drawing Names,” Bobbie Ann Mason treats her reader to a modern-day version of the journey of the Wise Men, an imaginative retelling of the classic tale of bringing gifts, with contemporary setting, characters, and issues.

Three of the sisters in “Drawing Names” have brought their men to the farm. Peggy and Iris have brought their husbands Cecil and Ray; Laura Jean has brought her lover, Jim; and Carolyn, the fourth sister, expects her lover, Kent, to join them at any time. It is these men who represent the three Magi, and the fourth Wise Man, as defined by Henry Van Dyke in his novella “The Story of the Other Wise Man.”

Peggy's husband...