Mrs. Wills Character Analysis

Mrs. Wills is Mr. Wills’s wife. She has been sick all year, and as a result, she is a very thin woman with pale skin. She sometimes sits on the porch for an hour or two, but she never visits with anyone else in the neighborhood. After the narrator steals the giant watermelon, Mr. Wills reveals that Mrs. Wills loves watermelons and had asked him about the progress of the “seed melon” every day. It was a symbol of hope for her, as she looked forward both to the meat of the melon itself and to enjoying the crop of giant watermelons that the melon’s seeds would bring the next year. Later, when the narrator apologizes to Mr. Wills, he learns that Mrs. Wills had not wanted the melon all for herself, but was instead hoping to share the melon with the whole neighborhood. This caring gesture suggests that people are not always what they appear. While the Wills family had appeared antisocial out of choice, Mrs. Wills had actually craved connection with her community.