So Much Water So Close to Home by Raymond Carver - Essay Example

Choice Text in Context Analysis of So Much Water So Close To Home Introduction The short story byRaymond Carver, “So Much Water So Close To Home”, is based on a marriage that is on the verge of falling through. Throughout this story, Stuart, the husband to Clair displays quite a relatively high level of insensitivity towards a very painful hunting trip. The wife, on the other hand, makes so many interpretations of their marriage from the occurrence. There is a point within the story where the two confront each other (Carver 76). The exchange by the couple by the pond aids in reflecting the ideas of isolation, uncertain identity and despondency. Call to adventure On an annual fishing trip, in isolated high country, Stuart, Rocco, Carl, and Billy find the body of a girl in the river. They think it is too late for them to report the case and decide not to get back to the road. Even all next day, they get too engrossed in their fishing engagement and do not bother going to report the case of the dead body they had found the previous evening. There is, in fact, a feeling among them that it doesn’t concern them so much; they don’t have to do it anyway (Carver 76). When they finally return home to report the case, their wives are shocked that they could find a dead human body and stay fishing all next day without caring to report the case early next if they thought it was too late to do so at the time they found it. What shocks the wives more is the fact they left the body lying there. Refusal of the call and the Supernatural Aid The men, however, have an opinion that the girl had died and didn’t need help in her dead state anyway. Even if she did, it wasn’t going to be urgent as their wives wanted to make them believe. They just didn’t see anything they could do with a dead body that wasn’t feeling any pain anymore. Stewart’s wife Claire is the last to know. The plot becomes thicker and she already can tell that something horrible happened. Stuart refuses to admit it, neither is he even will to talk about it. There is a callousness about all of this which disturbs her deeply. Stewart is not convinced that he has done anything wrong. Claire’s faith in her relationship with her husband is shaken to the core. The men and their entire family, including their wives and kids start getting haunted by some bad spirits (Carver 77). This is the point they start feeling they hadn’t done something good, but it’s too late for them to do anything about it. There is totally no undoing it, at least not at this point. Crossing the threshold and the belly of the whale This turns out to be the heroic moment for Claire. She is the only one that’s able to understand that something extremely important wasn’t addressed. She tries to set things right by trying to understand. However, her being the heroine of the circumstance causes her to turn against both her family and that of the girl who had died. Her once very peaceful marriage to Stewart is jeopardized and is on the brink and their son is the victim of the instability that befalls their marriage. As a hero of the story, trying to get things right, Clair is not able to make her husband understand the gravity of their action; this leaves her hurt to a point that she perceives their marriage in a different perspective (Carver 77). To most of the audience, Claire is recognized as the hero, based on the manners of ‘challenges’ she experiences. However, a close analysis of the text indicates that, though she stands out as a hero, there are several pitfalls that the author puts to her character. Road of trials At the start of the scene, Claire asks herself, “So much water so close to home, why did he have to go miles away to fish” (Carver 76).  With this question, Claire is expressing her despair over Stuart’s indifferent actions during his fishing trip and hints at the despondency those actions have created within her. To her, there’s more to the fishing trip than meets the eye. If Stuart and his buddies had chosen a different fishing site and never discovered the dead girl, she could have avoided the doubts about both him and their marriage now plaguing her mind. Claire would have preferred to never confront the emotions she is now forced to as she inquires of Stuart, “Why did you have to go there of all places” (Carver 76).  Meeting with the goddess and Woman as the temptress The callousness he displayed towards the drowned body has awoken Claire to his true insensitive nature, a reality she previously chose to ignore.  When Claire states “they said they were innocent” in reference to a gruesome murder in her hometown she is cautiously vocalizing her own suspicions that Stuart may have been involved in the drowned girl’s death (Carver 76).  Whether or not he really participated in the girl’s murder is not the fundamental concern, rather that Claire feels he is capable of such inhumanity.  She is despondent over this new perception of her husband. Atonement with the Father and Apotheosis  The theme of despondency is voiced by Claire as they sit by the pond and she relates to the drowned body.  “I float toward the pond, eyes open, face down, staring at the rocks and moss on the creek bottom until I am carried into the lake where I am pushed by the breeze” (Carver 76-77).  By imagining herself in the water, Claire implies she is figuratively drowning as she struggles to make sense of her relationship with Stuart.  Identifying with the drowned body also symbolizes Claire’s disconnection from the world; she is admitting to herself that she is not engaged in her life.  Her hopelessness is confirmed when she continues, “nothing will be any different” (Carver 77).  Refusal of the return, the magic flight, rescue from without, and crossing of the return threshold Despite her anguish, Claire seems resigned to staying with Stuart.  Just as soon as she comes to recognize her husband’s inadequacies, and the related failures of their partnership, she relinquishes the possibility of change.  “We will go on and on and on and on.  We will go on even now, as if nothing had happened” (Carver 77).   The repetition in Claire’s thoughts signifies that in spite of the pain of her revelations about Stuart’s lack of compassion, she is overcome by self-doubt and disavows her ability to transform their marriage or herself.  Further highlighting Claire’s despondency is the moment in this scene in which she slaps Stuart.  Her frustrations with both Stuart’s cold detachment and her own shortcomings in affecting positive change boil over in this violent act.          Isolation/detachedness as a theme of the story is marked most prominently through the inarticulate characters of So Much Water So close To Home.  The relationship of Stuart and Claire is mired by their inability to converse effectively, and the scene in the country embodies the disconnection.  Stuart resists any attempts of engaging in a significant conversation to do with finding the drowned body yet leaving it there a whole day.  “How the hell I to know anything like that was would happen,” he asks of Claire, uninterested in pursuing the topic as he tries to direct her attention to the weather (Carver 76).  Claire feels alienated by her husband’s refusal to take into consideration the moral implications that could come with his actions. She describes him, “he shakes his head and shrugs, as if it had all happened years ago, or to someone else” (Carver 76).  She remains mesmerized by the possibility of her husband distancing himself from the incidence, just a day after returning from the trip. Because of this, the heroin starts to relate the aloofness of her husband to their marriage. Indeed, she even starts to imagine herself drowning in a pond. Sometime later, she thinks to herself, “this is crazy…we need to lock our fingers together. We need to help one another” (Carver 77).  But she never gets to articulate those impulses.  Rather, she withdraws and again starts to herself drowning, drifting “even faster around and around in the pond” (Carver 77).  All the thoughts, she keeps to herself, and never shares them with anyone, not even her husband. This is a display is a real hero-able to bear the pain alone. Though, the withholding of the feelings eventuate an increase in the loneliness that she suffers at the moment. By slapping Stuart, Claire is conveying her separation from life; her own despondency overwhelms her, coupled with the previous breakage in their marriage. This shows an element of a human in her, she displays a sense of mundane. Bravely, she aims to strike him a second time, though he holds her halfway, “raises his own hand” (Carver 77).  She then crouches, “waiting, and sees something come into his eyes and then dart away” (Carver 77). In their trip back to town, the author mentions that she sits in the car, her knees drawn up below her chin, which is a show of disillusion. In other words, the challenge that comes at the end of the scene is whether to consider her as being the strong woman she was portrayed as, or if she had actually been swallowed by the challenges she experienced. This, however, shows a sign of solitude, and only heroes can accept a solitude life, so is she not a hero?      Master of two worlds, and freedom to live The happenings that follow Stuart’s fishing trip and the endless fights they have with Claire help her realize how much lack of communication in their relationship had affected their marital peace. In fact it has been the major cause of the loneliness that she experiences. A beaten hero, upon the thought of this, she sulks in the car. At the same time, Stuart looks back at her through the rare view, “keeps looking into the rearview mirror” (Carver 77).  He is certainly moved too, and as such, wishes they could get to the normal lifestyle of the past. To worsen the stance of being a hero, she is not even able to accept what really she has come to learn. She does not want to come to terms with the realization that they really have caused everything, and everyone is to blame for the situation in their marriage. She is quite uncertain about the future of their marriage. She is in great dilemma; does she hate her husband because he is “inhuman”? is the hero overwhelmed by the fact that their marriage is at stake. At the end, she is left unsure of what step to take next. Work Cited Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1972. Print. Carver, Raymond. "So Much Water so Close to Home." Spectrum. 17.1 (1975). Print Read More