Raymond Carver - Short Stories with Depth - Research Paper Example

Precisely why we have very few accomplished short story writers in English literature. In this essay we are going to analyse two stories written by one such accomplished writer Raymond Carver. We are going to compare and contrast these stories and also discuss Raymond Carver’s style of writing. The stories we are going to compare are, ‘Nobody said anything’ and ‘Will you please be quiet please?’ Life of Raymond carver Carver was born in Oregon, in a small mill town. His father was a skilled sawmill worker.

His mother supported the family by working as a waitress and retail clerk. Carver got married when he was nineteen and his wife was barely sixteen. Their first child, a daughter was born six months after they got married and a son followed next year. All this time Carver supported his family by doing odd jobs. He later moved to California where he completed his BA and also attended a creative writing workshop conducted by John Gardner. Gardner held profound influence on Carver’s life and career.

Carver kept moving his family from one state to another. His wife supported him by doing various odd jobs such as cocktail waitress, salesperson, administrative assistant and even as local school teacher. She supported Carver’s heavy drinking and life as a writer even though he kept teaching in universities across America. She also completed her degree and began to do better jobs to support Carver. Carver took to bottle and by his own admission has stated that in those years of heavy drinking he rarely wrote and only immersed himself in alcohol.

Even when his friend Cheever stopped drinking due to diagnosis of cancer, Carver continued to drink. He had resorted to drinking so much that he needed medical assistance thrice to help him back to life. Eventually with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous Carver stopped drinking and took control of his life again. He divorced his first wife and married Tess Gallagher in the year 1982. He died at the age of fifty due to cancer. Reflection of his life in his work Carver came from a blue collared working family.

He came typically from lower middle class background which is seen in his stories. He saw life of blue collared workers very closely. Like couple of his contemporaries Carver painted a picture of lower middle class people on his writing. He highlighted their misery, their problems, their losses, love, relationships, and compromises all in his stories and poetry. He developed a matter of fact approach of stating their lives in his works. For a writer it is difficult to overcome the influences of his life while writing.

Personal experiences and feelings do find place in the work they produce. One has to look beyond words to understand and feel what the writer actually wants to convey as deeper meaning to the picture he is creating. All his life till forty Carver struggled with his life by doing odd jobs, teaching and writing. He saw life from close end of the pavilion and hence all those experiences found place in his work. Carver’s style of writing Carver is said to have a style of ‘dirty realism’ in his work.

He was a minimalist writer using words only when necessary. John Gardner whose writing workshop Carver attended mentored Carver to use minimum words required to express him. It was Carver’s publisher Gordon Lish who pushed this minimalist writing to the brim by further cutting down the number of words Carver wrote. Carver later broke the agreement with Lish