Shame

Throughout the short story, the author examines the ways in which shame impacts the individual's relationships with others through Benjamin's relationships with his father, wife, and son. At the start of the story, Roger Button is alarmed and distraught by his son's oddly aged appearance. Only moments after meeting his child for the first time, Roger sinks "down upon a chair," concealing "his face in his hands," and "in an ecstasy of horror," cries out: "What will people say? What must I do" (7)? As a well-established member of the Baltimore, Maryland community, Roger is convinced that the bizarre circumstances of his son's birth will threaten and destroy his reputation. Over the course of his son's youth, he desperately persists "in his unwavering purpose": to prove that Benjamin "is a baby, and a baby he should remain" (12). Roger believes that if he treats his son like the...