¶ … realistic? Since a short story is a work of fiction, a product of the imagination, how does an author create the illusion that what is transpiring in the narrative seems 'realistic' to the reader? Why do some works of fiction seem more realistic than other works of fiction? The short story "A Small Good Thing" by Raymond Carver seems like a realistic work of fiction and thus is an excellent way to answer these questions. Carver's story tells the tale of a young boy who is hit by a car near the day of his birthday. It relates the effects this tragedy has upon the boy's parents. Through the use of extremely mundane but specific details, simple and action-oriented characterization of the major protagonists, and very simple and spare prose, Carver creates a sense of a realistic story, even though the end of the...
The story begins with the boy's mother ordering a cake for her child. The author does not simply say, however, that the cake was ordered. Instead, he details the ordering with the care that a mother would probably very well give to her child's birthday cake. This tells us something about the love the mother feels for the boy as well as the boy himself. "After looking through a loose-lead binder with photographs of cakes taped onto the pages, she ordered chocolate, the child's favorite. The cake she chose was decorated with a spaceship and a launchign pad under a sprinkling of white stars, and a planet made of red frosting at the other end." This child seems real to…
The story "The Bridle," for instance, tells about what could have turned out to be a family tragedy. However, written by Carver it becomes much stronger and more positive. After going bankrupt in agriculture, a family moves with its few belongings packed into a station wagon to a cheap apartment in a hotel somewhere in the Midwest. The narrator, who is the unfriendly and uncaring woman who runs the hotel,
The beginning of the end being her attempted suicide, due to the fact that she felt disconnected from him, her first husband, and the world, as he was in the military and they had constantly moved away from human connections she had made. (Carver NP) Her second marriage, to the insular narrator, going to bed at different times, and he sitting up watching late night television in his insular
Raymond Carver When one is seeking a bright, cheerily optimistic view of the world one does not automatically turn to the works of Raymond Carver. The short story writer - whom many critics cite as being the greatest master of that form since Ernest Hemingway - filled his pages with anger and discontent, despair and loss, desperation and the demons of addiction. The overall tone of his work is certainly dark.
Carver Raymond Carver's greater maturity of symbolism and theme in "A Small, Good Thing," as opposed to "The Bath" Both the short stories "The Bath" by Raymond Carver and "A Small, Good Thing," are tales about sudden, tragic and meaningless death. However, while superficially the two stories may revolve around similar themes and plot devices, the longer, latter tale of "A Small, Good, Thing," is ultimately the more thematically redemptive of the
Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1938. Carver began his career as a writer as a poet but is more well-known for his prowess in the art of short stories, for which he is widely regarded as the preeminent storyteller of his time. Carver himself is often quoted as saying: "I began as a poet, my first publication was a poem. So I suppose on my tombstone I'd
Raymond Carver is a writer who is known for a distinct style and also for distinct themes. The style is what is usually refers to as 'minimalist.' The themes common to his stories include the basics of life and people's struggles. What is most significant about his subjects is that they are not significant. Rather than focus on anything obviously meaningful, Carver focuses on the realities of the average life,
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