The Accident

In the poem “The Accident”, Erica Funkhouser suggests that life isn’t what it really seems. She suggests this in the way she wrote her poem.

Some may say that the accident was the neighbor’s son getting hit by a van and going to the hospital. What it seems to me is that the neighbor’s son is just an excuse; I think the real accident is the husband’s wife being there that morning. “It was when the neighbor answered ‘yes’ to a question the woman's husband had not yet asked that the woman finally understood. Her husband had not even mentioned eggs, but the neighbor knew he was going to cook for her.” (Ll.20-25) In these lines, there is some evidence that the neighbor and the woman’s husband are having an affair. How did the neighbor even know that the woman’s husband was going to cook for her, unless they have been together and she just accustomed to his cooking. Another piece of evidence that suggests this is that the woman didn’t even know that her husband was going to cook until the neighbor said “yes”.

“At long last he broke the eggs. She had never seen him do it like this before, two-handed. He always liked to show off by breaking the eggs with one hand. This evening his hands were trembling as he cracked the eggs on the skillet's rim, hurrying to slide the whole brimming mess into the pan to quiet the sizzling fat.” (Ll. 39-49) In these lines, it shows how the husband seems nervous, he is not showing off like he usually does to the neighbor; he seems very scared that his wife is there, nervous that she may pick up on something.