Raymond Carver Essay Example

story this makes the reader puzzled, because the reader doesn't know whether the son Is guilty or innocent. The main character is the writer of the letter; an unnamed mother, who fears for her life. She Isn't described In the story, but Instead she describes her son, who also Is a very Important character. He describes In details her son's doings in the weeks before his disappearance from her life. This might in fact suggest that the events have been impressed on her memory and still haunt her, because she seems able to remember the dialogues between her and her son very good after all these years. The mother describes her son as a "good boy except for his outburst and that he could not tell the truth", but when her son was still a teenager, she noticed that things started to go wrong. She tells about an Incident, where their cat Trudy was murdered, and the neighbor Mr.. Cooper told, he thought, it's was her son, who had killed it.

When confronted with Trusty's dead the son "acted surprised and shocked", which indicates that he could be the murder, but the mother still thinks he is a good boy, But this idea is compounded by the many lies he tells her. Such as the lies about how much he earn and about a field trip with his school. The lies continue and the mother doesn't understand why her son is lying. Near the end of his senior year the son buys a car, a shotgun, and a knife, and when he does that the mother's feeling towards him and vice versa seems to change;

"l hated to see those things He laughed, he always had a laugh for you.

The situation escalates, when he disappears a night and first comes back home the morning after. His personality is changed; "he was nervous". The son doesn't want to tell anything to his mother about what he has done. Other than he has been on a hunting trip with a boy called Fred. But accidentally the mother finds a bloody t-shirt in the trunk of his car, and then she seems to change her attitude towards him; "He mother and the son are having a power struggle; "Kneel is what I say. " The mother doesn't kneel for her son, but she gets afraid and locks herself in her bedroom.

The next day the son is gone, and the mother only sees him at his graduation after that. Later the mother learns that her son had Joined the marines and that he not so long after had become governor. She wants to be proud of what he has achieved, but instead she afraid; she is afraid of ending as a blood stain on his t-shirt. She lost the power struggle. In the story "Tell the woman we're going", two men are out for a game of pool and a beer. They both seem to be quite ordinary Just like the son in "Why, honey? ", but on their way home something unexpected happens.

They meet woo girls, and they give them the rock. In this story, Just like in "Why, honey? ", Carver makes the reader confused, because we don't actually know what the two men have done to the girls,

Just like we don't know if the son has killed someone. So in both cases the suspected killing comes unexpected, and therefore the theme "unexpected violence" is very conspicuous. In the story "They're not your husband", Earl is visiting his wife's workplace, a coffee shop, and he overhears a conversation between two men, who say they find his wife unattractive.

Earl decides to put his wife on a diet against her will; he is showing her that he is in charge, Just like the son in "Why, honey? " tries to show his mother, he is. But this power struggle ends different, because the wife in the end of the story gets the power on her side, and therefore she is in charge; the women have the power. Not like in "Why, honey? " where the son has the power, and the mother has to live in fear. The message in the text could therefore be things aren't always what they seem to be, because a governor could be a power-seeking murder, who uses his power to control other people and to terrify them.

Raymond Carver's life Raymond Carver was born in Oregon in 1938, but he grew up Yakima, Washington with a father, who often was drunk, and with a mother, who didn't have a permanent job. Carver educated from a local school in Yakima, Washington, after graduating in 1956, he got married, and he got two children. Back then Carver was working as a janitor, sawmill laborer, delivery man, and library assistant. After receiving his degree in 1963, he moved moved to Iowa City, Iowa, where he received a 500$ grant to complete

a year's graduate study at the Iowa Writer's Workshop.

After that his writing rarer accelerated, and in 1964 his story "The Furious Seasons" was listed in The Best American Short Stories. During the years of working different Jobs, raising children, and trying to write, Carver began drinking, and he became an alcoholic. Through the ass's he continued drinking, but he also managed to publish several of his poems and short stories, but in 1975 alcoholism forced him to file for a bankruptcy. In 1977, Carver managed to stop drinking. This new stage of sobriety is often marked his "second life" as a writer. Tragically on June 2nd, 1988, Raymond Carver died of lung cancer.

His contribution to literature is often described as very big, because he is one of the founders of the literary minimalism and especially the dirty realism. The minimalism stands out in the way Carver only uses short and clear sentences, so the reader has to read between the lines to understand the story points. The dirty about the reverse of the medal, and not only the bright side of life.