Aeschylus once said, "Man must suffer to be wise." In other words no one is perfect; one has to learn form his mistakes. This quote is proven true in, "Button Button," by Richard Matheson and, "The Last Spin," by Evan Hunter. In these two works, the decision Norma makes by pushing the button and the mistake Tigo makes by playing Russian Roulette both show that their feelings in the beginning of the stories end up not being the right decision at the end of the stories and how they both learned form their mistakes. .
In "Button Button," Richard Matheson shows how a characters greed and selfishness end up turning against her and he shows how these characteristics end up making her suffer, so she can learn from her mistakes for future situations. The White's are a married couple that have no children and one day are resented with a button and a note attached to it explaining what they have to do. Norma's character is portrayed as a character that is very greedy and selfish. As the story progresses her character is shown. This can be seen when at first she has second thoughts about pushing the button because she does not want to kill another individual, but on the other hand she wants the fifty thousand dollars. As the story develops she starts to second guess herself and thinks that she can be rich and the person that dies she won't even know. Matheson uses foreshadowing by continuously bringing up the point that Norma won't know the person she kills. But at the end this fact ends up a key factor. Norma's selfishness is portrayed quite often throughout the story. This can be seen when Norma says, "If it's some old Chinese peasant ten thousand miles away? Some diseased native in the Congo." This shows how Norma only cares about herself and that she doesn't care about if another person dies, as long as she gets the fifty thousand dollars. Norma's greediness is portrayed when she says, "A chance to take a trip to Europe we've always talked about, A chance to buy a cottage on the Island.