Raymond Carver's "The Bath" and "A Small, Good Thing"

Notes

"The Bath"

• Early, minimalist style of Carver's

• Concentrates our attention on the event of the story

• Little sentimentality or emotion

• We observe without being asked to become involved in the story

• Bathing:

  • A fairly mundane, every-day aspect of life

  • A ritualistic, religious cleansing (as if due to quilt)

• A cold bath -- forces one to wake up -- e.g., the parents begin to realize that life is tenuous

• Most characters lack compassion:

  • The boy's friend

  • The doctors

  • The nurses

  • The baker

  • The parents?

• Theme (?) -- they do not lack compassion so much as they lack the means of expressing it -- i.e., poor communication skills

• The baker

• When words fail, they use body language

• The telephone:

  • A symbol and an agent of modern communication (or miscommunication?)

  • An agent of grief for the parents

  • An agent of attack for the baker

• The mother and father -- attempting distance? displacement? -- their speculative observations of others: displacement? seeking connection? making it real? understanding it?

• The ending -- deliberately ambiguous -- is it the hospital or the baker? -- leaves us hanging on the phone

"A Small, Good Thing"

• A rewrite after two years

• Switches emphasis from action to emotion

• Pronouns and actual names now used

  • The mother -- she -- Ann

  • The father -- he -- Howard

  • The child -- he -- Scotty

  • The baker -- he -- he (still unnamed, but we better understand him)

• New characters exhibiting compassion

  • The friend

  • The doctor

• Greater detail engages the reader more closely

  • Specifics of the injuries

  • New communication between the parents

• Communication remains a concern

  • The doctor's initial refusal to say "coma" so as not to alarm the parents = importance of the words we choose

  • The doctor's excessive chatter = reveals his lack of knowledge of the coma -- vs. -- kindly concern for the parents

• The climax -- Scotty's death -- vs. -- the doctor's repeated assurances

• The parents -- more together here -- both obsessed with blame: fate; self-blame; the baker

• Ann -- now demands answers from both the doctor and the baker

• The other family (Franklin's family) -- shared grief

• Continuations from "The Bath":

  • Scotty's fate

  • The parents' subsequent responses

  • The confrontation with the baker

• Eating -- lack of desire and inability to eat -- vs. -- eating with the baker

• No comfort:

  • Scotty dies in great pain and does not recognize his parents

  • The apologies of the doctor

  • The assurance that Scotty's condition was 1 in 1,000,000 chance

• The parents are initially in shock and grief

• They respond without feeling -- they act as if in a dream

• A return to feeling -- Scotty's things are everywhere -- and -- the baker's phone calls (anger)

• This foreshadows an eventual return to life

• "Yoda" from Star Wars: "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hurt, hurt leads to suffering."

• The baker's miracle -- he responds compassionately and accepts their blame and he gets them to eat

• The resulting hunger reminds them and us that despite tragedy, life goes on

• The baker is rewarded for this kindness and their sympathy draws him out

• Breaking bread = communion