subject: A Comparative Analysis of Three of Raymond Carver's Short Stories [print this page] A Comparative Analysis of Three of Raymond Carver's Short Stories
Raymond Carver is, by popular literary consensus, a minimalist. His stories are short, his language is stark, his characters are uncomplicated and his symbols are basic. None of this, however, implies poverty of meaning as Carver's short stories are about the meaning of life, the meaning behind relationships and the meaning underscoring human action (Hallett, pp. 488-89). As Carver himself explains in "On Writing," short stories are "glimpses" of life and, more importantly, "illuminating" glimpses (p. 17). In other words, from Carver's point of view, even though they are nothing more than a brief glimpse at a particular moment in life, short stories illuminate one's understanding of life, insofar as they are focused, concentrated and in-depth `glimpses.' Accordingly, while his literary style lends to his categorization as a minimalist, Carver is a `maximalist' insofar as meaning is concerned. It is, thus, that a comparative analysis of "Cathedral," "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," and "A Small Good Thing" are replete with meaning regarding light and dark, faith and love. In all, and as will be argued in this essay, the mentioned meanings/themes are symbolized through the male-female relationship.
Human relationships, the way in which men and women interact with one another, conveys a spiritual, even biblical theme, in the three named stories. "In A Small Good Thing," bread symbolizes faith and religion. At the end of the story, Carver allows his characters to meet, discuss their predicament and explore their loss. Scotty's parents confront the baker and even though he had made several menacing calls regarding Scotty, the confrontation assumes an air of spirituality. Instead of turning into a violent or bitter exchange, it becomes a moment of shared experiences. As Scotty's parents recount their loss, the baker explains what happened to him, apologizing for having harassed them. A connection, a union, is formed between the baker and Scotty's parents. He offers them bread, "a small good thing," and they eat, they talk, and they come to terms with one another and with their suffering. The bread, symbolizing the crystallization of the relationship between the parents and the baker, is not just "a small good thing," as the baker describes it but, is reconciliation with others and with oneself, such as which comes through faith. In other words, within the context of this seemingly simple story and this very common symbol, bread, Carver, provides an in depth glimpse into that which keeps people going and allows them to survive faith.
Light and dark, symbolized through the male-female dichotomy and the sight-blindness imagery, dominate in "Cathedral." As with "A Small Good Thing," Carver takes a single moment/incident and dissects it in order to come up, not with a story, but with a commentary upon the nature of life and human relationships. The wife symbolizes light. Certainly, she has had moments of darkness, including ones of utter despair such as when she attempted suicide but, she is able to hang on and persist because she has an innate faith in the presence of goodness. Thus, she writes poems to immortalize/capture important personal experience, continues her friendship with a blind man over the years and, when that man suffers a personal loss, invites him to spend some time with her and her husband. Her belief in the presence of light/goodness, extends to faith that her husband will go out of his way to entertain her blind friend. Needless to say, her husband does not go out of his way but a bond, nevertheless develops between the husband and friend. That bond, forged over cannabis, becomes that "small good thing" of the previous story it becomes the crystallization of faith in the presence of goodness.
The theme of light and dark is further reflected in the sight and blindness imagery which pervades "Cathedral." The blind man is revealed not as the one who lives in the dark but, paradoxically, in light. He sees the infinite possibilities which the husband, with his sight, with his light, cannot see. Indeed, he teaches the husband to close his eyes, feel and see with his senses and, draw. It is, thus, that when she walks in towards the end of the story, she finds them both on the floor, drawing a cathedral. That cathedral is a symbol of the light which the two men find together and whose essence the wife represents.
Critical analysis leads one to the realization that both of the stories discussed in the preceding are not just about human relationships but about love, whether love between parents and child, wife and husband or friends. Love, as the dominant theme, rather than one of the themes, is found in Carver's "What We Talk about When We Talk about Love," and not in the stories discussed in the preceding. In this story, the primary symbol is the heart; the heart as the source of spiritual love and faith and the heart as the source of physical love and the protagonist is a once seminary student turned cardiologist, whose life's quest is to understand, not the heart but, love. This story, which takes an in-depth look into a moment in Mel's life, exposes the way in which some people transform their desire to understand love and life into a hopeless and futile, lifelong quest.
In this short story Carver exposes a single person's misunderstandings about the meaning and implications of love. Mel, the protagonist, is that person whose views on love, whose understand of this emotion, is explored in this story. According to the narrator, Nick, Mel is in a position to understand what love means: "My friend Mel McGinnis was taking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right" (Carver, 'What We Talk," p. 137). Since the heart has a literal and symbolic meaning, Mel's profession makes him the expert on both the literal heart as the human organ and the symbolic heart as the source of love. Thus, being a cardiologist, Me1 is the one who has "the right" to talk about both the matters of the heart and love (Carver, "What We Talk'' p. 137). A closer look at the setting, however, reveals how Carver develops an uneasy contrast between Mel's knowledge and what he really understands about love. Nick states, " The four of us [Nick, Mel and our wives) were . drinking gin. Sunlight filled kitchen and we somehow got on the subject of love" (Carver, "What We Talk" p. 137). Although the narrator's description of the shining sun, implying illumination and the revelation of knowledge, suggests that Mel's discussion will reveal his knowledge of love, the fact that the plot is set in a desert city strongly suggests what he has to say about love will expose the brevity of his understanding.
As Nick shares what he knows about Mel, readers see the conversation develop into a glimpse that reveals Mel's misunderstanding of love. Since Nick shares the fad that Me1 when to "a seminary before going to medical school,'' he points out how Me1 had tried to educate himself abut love (Carver, "What We Talk" p. 137). Here Mel's educational background alludes to how he went to a seminary to learn about spiritual love and went to a medical school to learn about the symbolic source of love, the heart, In developing a character who seeks to learn about love, develops Me1 as an example to show his readers how learning about love only limits one's understanding of it Thus, he finds difficulty in comprehending how his wife's ex-boyfriend could have loved her and, indeed, finds the very concept of love quite difficult to grasp. The supposed expert on the heart, on the symbolic embodiment of love, exhibits an astonishing lack of faith in the concept. Added to that, whereas knowledge is supposed to illuminate one's path, Mel's knowledge does not and, indeed, may even be argued to obscure his understanding of the more intangible aspects of life emotions.
Proceeding from the above stated, it is evident that Carver's short stories are held together by their depth of meaning. They take a single instance in life and dissect it in order to provide a commentary on an aspect of life. That aspect, as indicated in the stories discussed in the preceding, may be any of spirituality/faith, light and dark, human relations, food/bread and emotions/love, to name but a few. Represented by a single symbol, that aspect assumes an importance which extends beyond the parameters of each of the stories in which they are discussed because, as earlier noted, what Carver discusses is life and human relationships.
Works Cited
Carver, Raymond. "On Writing." Fires: Essays, Poems and Short Stories by Raymond Carver. Santa Barbara: Carver Press, 1983.
Carver, Raymond. Cathedral. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1989.
Carver, Raymond. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1982.
Hallett, Cynthia. "Minimalism and the Short Story." Studies Short Fiction, 33 (1996): 487-495.
