Themes in Raymond Carver's Literature
In Short Cuts, by Raymond Carver, characters experience trials and problems in their lives, whether extreme such as in " A Small, Good Thing" and "Lemonade" or nominal such as in " Vitamins". They all seem to depict these struggles as uphill battles which the characters cannot and mostly do not overcome. The characters throughout Carver's "Short Cuts" struggle through their lives in private desperation, often to ultimately realize that they are bound to the truth of who they really are, which is shown in the story "Neighbors."
In "Neighbors", Bill and Arlene Miller are a couple with menial jobs who give credence to the saying "the grass is greener on the other side of the fence". They are dissatisfied with their own lives and look to the lives of their neighbors to find happiness in their own. Once a happy couple, they often feel that "they alone among their circle had been passed by somehow (13)." They did not discuss how they could change their own lives, but merely compared their lives with the Stones. "They talked about it sometimes,...
A friendship is not all they have together, Lennie and George have dreams. Lennie and George have worked up the idea of owning their own piece of land together. Lennie wants to tend the rabbits (Steinbeck 11) and George just wants to be his own boss (Steinbeck 14). The only problem with their dream is that it is unrealistic. They cannot buy land to tend and just go days without tending it because they do not want to. Like many traveling farm hands during the 1930s, George and Lennie think they could work up enough money to buy their own place and not give a “hoot” about anyone but their selves. Although their dream is unattaina...
Carver tells the story in first person of a narrator married to his wife. Problems occur when she wants a friend of hers, an old blind man, to visit for a while because his wife has died. The narrator's wife used to work for the blind man in Seattle when the couple was financial insecure and needed extra money. The setting here is important, because Seattle is associated with rain, and rain symbolically represents a cleansing or change. This alludes to the drastic change in the narrator in the end of the story. The wife and blind man kept in touch over the years by sending each other tape recordings of their voices which the narrator refers it to being his wife's "chief means or recreation" (pg 581).
Langston Hughes's stories deal with and serve as a commentary of conditions befalling African Americans during the Depression Era. As Ostrom explains, "To a great degree, his stories speak for those who are disenfranchised, cheated, abused, or ignored because of race or class." (51) Hughes's stories speak of the downtrodden African-Americans neglected and overlooked by a prejudiced society. The recurring theme of powerlessness leads to violence is exemplified by the actions of Sargeant in "On the Road", old man Oyster in "Gumption", and the robber in "Why, You Reckon?"
A transformation took place during the story and it is evident through the narrator?s character. In the beginning he was lacking in compassion, he was narrow minded, he was detached, he was jealous, and he was bitter. Carver used carefully chosen words to illustrate the narrator?s character and the change. Throughout the story his character undergoes a transformation into a more emotionally aware human being.
Metaphors are an ingenious way to talk about topics such as marriage. In the poem, marriage is compared to many items such as a house, a tent, an edge of a desert and forest, and unpainted stairs.She implies that marriage is not any of those except the outdoor stairs in which the couple sits upon , and ponders how they have survived this far. The end line,” We are learning to make fire,” (Atwood 12), pushes forth the idea a couple with marital problems are not broken and should divorce, but rather bent and can be
The husband in Raymond Carvers “Cathedral” wasn’t enthusiastic about his wife’s old friend, whom was a blind man coming over to spend the night with them. His wife had kept in touch with the blind man since she worked for him in Seattle years ago. He didn’t know the blind man; he only heard tapes and stories about him. The man being blind bothered him, “My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to. (Carver 137)” The husband doesn’t suspect his ideas of blind people to be anything else. The husband is already judging what the blind man will be like without even getting to actually know him. It seems he has judged too soon as his ideas of the blind man change and he gets a better understanding of not only the blind man, but his self as well.
It describes how the conservative farmer follows traditions blindly and the isolated life followed by him. It reflects how people make physical barriers and that later in life come to their social life too. Where neighbor with pine tree, believes that this separation is needed as it is essential for their privacy and personal life. The poem explores a paradox in human nature. The first few lines reflect demolition of the wall, ?Something there is that doesn?t reflect love a wall? this reflects that nature itself does not like separation. The "something" referring to the intangible sense of social interaction. Furthermore "that sends the frozen-ground-swell under it" refers to Frost or to the author. Although the narrator does not want the wall, ironically, the mending of the wall brings the neighbors together and literally builds their friendship. An additional irony of the poem is that the only time these two neighbors sees each other is when they both mend the wall. The narrator sees the stubbornness in his neighbor, and uses the simile 'like an old-stone savage' to compare him to a stone-age man who 'moves in darkness', that is, set in his ways, and who is unlikely to change his views.
Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is a work of “sentimental fiction” because it connects all the people living in the small town of Grover’s Corners. In a small town like Grover’s Corners everybody knows each other within the town, so there is a deeper connection of companionship, friendship, and love within the town. The residents of Grover’s Corners constantly take time out of their days to connect with each other, whether through idle chat with the milkman or small talk with a neighbor. So when love and marriage or death happens in the town, it will affect the majority Grover’s Corners residents. The most prominent interpersonal relationship in the play is a romance—the courtship and marriage of George Gibbs and Emily Webb. Wilder suggests that
Birds chirping and children playing on every street corner, giggling and jumping rope. Every street is complete with several nice houses and big yards with white fences to accompany them. Every house has a happy family to live in it, a few children who joyfully skip home from school every day, a father and mother who come home after work each day, all without a care in the world. Each family is living a comfortable life able to afford most things and able to easily and quickly save for things not quite in their reach. There are no worries about how much money there will be to buy groceries after the bills are paid or what the family will have to give up to be able to keep a certain comfort that they currently enjoy. Each family in this town is living a picture perfect life that they would not trade for the world.
The first three stanzas present an image of neighbor as a secretive, but shrewd farmer. He is shrouded in mystery to the narrator and her companions, as is his great prize-winning sow, impounded from public stare. He obviously views the sow as a source of great pride, but also something very secret and personal. Even his barn takes on a mystical quality as the narrator wanders its lantern-corridors as if in a maze. In fact, the speaker will only venture in at dusk to try and catch a glimpse of the wonderous beast.
In Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," the husband's view of blind men is changed when he encounters his wife's long time friend, Robert. His narrow minded views and prejudice thoughts of one stereotype are altered by a single experience he has with Robert. The husband is changed when he thinks he personally sees the blind man's world. Somehow, the blind man breaks through all of the husband's jealousy, incompetence for discernment, and prejudgments in a single moment of understanding.
Carver's short stories can have so many aspects due to the minimalism he has uses during his stories that the only limit is our own fantasy and the few guide lines we are given in the stories.
Do little things in daily life become significant over time? Analyzing the short story “Little
"Neighbor" is here a metaphor for two people who are emotionally close to each other. "Good fences make good neighbors", is a line the author emphasizes by using it two times. The "neighbor" says the line while the main character does not agree with it. He can not see that there is something between them they need to be "walling in or walling out".
Although Ernest Hemingway and Raymond carver lives were very different they share one thing which was there style of writing. Both wrote in a minimalist fashion and are still today considered the masters of minimalism. In the short stories of Hemingway Hills like White Elephants and Carvers short story What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, both use minimalist techniques such as open endings, symbolism, omission, and characteristics of main characters.