Guy Tiphane
Prof. M. Wilson
English 204
Raymond
Carver’s Careful is the story of a
man whose world has fallen apart. He has
left his wife to live separately in a small apartment and finds refuge in
alcohol. He cannot face any problem on
his own and adapts to his new diminishing world by doing nothing about
anything. It is a story about very
ordinary people, in Carver’s in your face
style of writing, who encounter trivial issues that prevent them from acting on
their own lives.
This paper
first looks at the dominant symbolic elements of the story and how they relate
with each other. It then overviews some
of the textual elements that allow the story to be so simple, yet so powerful
at the same time.
The first two pages of the story introduce us to Lloyd’s character in his new miniature lodgings. He has to “duck his head” when he walks around the two rooms and “be careful getting in and out of bed.” Carver has placed Lloyd in cramped quarters which would be very uncomfortable to anyone but Lloyd. We learn early in the story that he goes home with “three bottles of André champagne and some lunch meat” and that it is basically what he keeps in the tiny refrigerator. Lloyd got into the habit of drinking cheap champagne (a bottle of André costs $3.99 as of this writing), and as any good alcoholic doesn’t see anything wrong about it. His adaptation to the cramped quarters is matched by his adaptation to eating crumb doughnuts and champagne for breakfast.
The day of
Inez’s visit and his problem with his ear, he is not only drinking champagne
before she arrives, but also requests a bathroom break in order to go take a
good sip from the bottle he has stashed.
The choice of champagne as Lloyd’s drink merits some investigation.
“He couldn’t
hear anything clearly, and he seemed to have lost his sense of balance, his
equilibrium in the process.” (Carver, 266)
His remembrance of swimming in the municipal pool and having his head feel “like it was awash with fluid” (268) keeps a good connection between drinking and his problem, only capped by his remembrance of blowing air into his head: “His ears would pop.” This is the same pop as the popping of the champagne cork at the end of the story:
“He worked the plastic cork out of the bottle as carefully
as he could, but there was still the festive pop of the champagne being opened.” (276)
Not only would his ear pop, he would have “the pleasant sensation of water running out of his head” (268) just as pleasant as the champagne flowing into his mouth. Once the plugged ear gets unplugged, “liquid poured out of his ear” (274) coinciding with the immense satisfaction of hearing, a satisfaction matched by the satisfaction of drinking and the avoidance of any other issues.
The morning of
Inez’s visit, Lloyd’s ear is plugged up, justifying his avoidance of a
conversation with her. Lloyd seems to be
able to talk about his ear problem but does not seem to hear or listen to Inez
as soon as she talks about the need to talk.
Whenever Inez says something that is not directly concerning the ear
problem, Lloyd seems to have difficulty understanding. When Inez asks him: “What have you
tried?” … “I mean, what have you done for it so far?” Lloyd responds: “What’d you say?” (268)
Even then, Inez seems to acknowledge that she is talking into a deaf ear:
“Lloyd, we have things to talk about. But I guess we’ll have to take things one at
a time.” (268)
Knowing that what she has to say cannot be good, Lloyd sometimes chooses not to hear. After Inez goes to the bathroom, she says something that he does not want to hear:
“She said something, but he couldn’t make out the
words. When she stopped talking, he
didn’t ask her what it was she’d said.
Whatever it was, he knew he didn’t want her to say it again.” (270)
After he gets a drink of champagne in the bathroom, Inez tells him she has found the bottle in the bathroom. The dialogue continues in which we only know that Inez “said something else” and that Lloyd “really hadn’t heard her,” hinting at the possibility that sometimes he hears her but chooses not to. In fact Inez may even have understood that because we can read what Lloyd does not answer to:
“We’ll talk later,” she said. “We have things to discuss, Lloyd. Money is one thing. But there are other things, too.” (272)
Lloyd’s ear finally being cured, he is able to hear everything, but he chooses not to listen:
“But at the door she turned and said something else to
him. He didn’t listen. He didn’t want to. He watched her lips move until she’d said
what she had to say.” (275)
On their first encounter since two weeks, Lloyd perceives change in Inez. Through the free indirect discourse that is used extensively in the story, we can get an idea of Lloyd’s frame of mind:
“She didn’t smile.
She stood in the doorway in a bright spring outfit. He hadn’t seen these clothes before. She was holding a canvas handbag that had
sunflowers stitched onto its sides. He
hadn’t seen the handbag before, either.” (266-267)
It would be unlikely for a character like Lloyd to say anything about her bright spring outfit and the handbag. The narrator summarizes not only what Lloyd sees but also how he sees it: as something he has not seen before, with a hint that he is feeling challenged in his view of Inez. This challenge is reinforced as well by the fact that she is not smiling: she may intend to talk again about something he does not want to talk about, their relationship. Referring back to the first line of the story (“After a lot of talking – what his wife, Inez, called assessment”) which would also be written from Lloyd’s point of view, we can infer that Lloyd has a number of problems with his wife, one of which is “a lot of talking.”
Somehow Lloyd manages to hear Inez arrive downstairs so that he can hide the bottle of champagne in the bathroom before her arrival. Ironically, Lloyd notices that “she acted as if she hadn’t heard him” (267) while initially his response does not seem to be problematic. It seems that his hearing gets worse after he goes to the bathroom to get a long drink of champagne, but it could be from his sense of guilt after she has found his bottle in the bathroom. Once his hearing is restored and all possibilities of talking rendered futile, she leaves. Lloyd can now listen to the conversation between Inez and the landlady, and to the starting of the car. He listens selectively.
From what we know, with an alcoholic husband who selectively listens to what he wants, there is clearly a communication problem between Inez and Lloyd. Perhaps there was no communication before, only assumptions, as Lloyd remembers that “There’d been a time, long ago, when they used to feel they had ESP when it came to what the other one was thinking.” (269) The text supports very clearly the isolation that Lloyd asks for himself, and his resistance to seeing their life under a different point of view.
A simple survey of the vocabulary in use in the story reveals an extensive use of communication verbs such as hear, listen, and talk. In fact the first sentence of the story is about “a lot of talking” which from Lloyd’s point of view is problematic. The first two pages of the story describe Lloyd’s new world and how he avoid issues such as talking to the landlady to know if she is alive. He does not want a telephone the story says. TV, a one-way communication device which assures its watchers that they will not have to express any ideas, is constantly on. When he sees her TV is on, he assumes his landlady is not dead, as if the TV were supplying all a person ever needed in life. Thanks to his problem with his ear, he manages to duck Inez’s requests for talking. Once his hearing is fully restored, he chooses not to listen to her.
I was
surprised to find many references to the passing of time in Careful, but their presence and Lloyd’s
awareness of time illustrate his being cornered even more accurately than the
description of the cramped quarters he lives in. The day of Inez’s visit is announced by the
sentence: “The one time Inez came to visit, it was
At the end of
the story, after Inez’s departure, he guesses it is “about
We have found high level themes that are clearly supported by the text, but it would be good to highlight the features of the story that make it work so well.
Bringing the story down to its bones, we find that there is not much of a plot. There is no action that brings any of the characters to another level such as there was in Carver’s story Cathedral where a man betters himself through his interaction with a visitor. We can qualify an initial state of the characters and compare it with their state at the end of the story to see if the story changed them. In Cathedral the main character works with the blind man to draw a cathedral, something he has never been able to do, or to feel, in his limited world. In Careful, however, Lloyd just moved in isolation into cramped quarters and avoids communication with the rest of the world. His daily activities are limited to drinking, buying more bottles of champagne, and watching TV. If something bothers him he will try to adapt unless it is something he cannot solve by himself, which is what the core of the action is about. But once the problem is solved, he returns to his usual state, drinking, watching TV, wearing pajamas, and guessing what time it is. Has the action of the story changed him one way or another? He worries about the coming night, but as we read at the beginning of the story that he had to “be careful getting in and out of bed” (264) the only new fear he has is about how he will manage not to sleep on the wrong side. His condition does not improve or significantly worsen, and he waits passively for nothing else to happen in an empty life.
The plot can be summarized as follows. An alcoholic man, separated from his wife since two weeks, lives in a very small apartment, too small for him. One day his ear is plugged up and his wife comes for a visit. She wants to talk to him, but spends the whole time trying to solve his ear problem. His usual drunken life resumes after she leaves him without having talked to him.
Now we can look at how the story can be made interesting through the choice of language and deictic information.
André
champagne was introduced in the late 1960’s by the Gallo wine company. It is still available at this time, more than
thirty years later. Carver published
this story in his collection Cathedral,
bearing a copyright date of 1981, 1982, and 1983. The Today
Show is a nationally broadcast TV show on NBC: this sets the story anywhere
in the
The story is set inside the house, which could be anywhere. The house itself is large (three-story) but Lloyd’s dwellings are not: he occupies the attic, and he is too large for it. He has to be careful when moving around it and when going in and out of bed. This in itself is unusual: we can imagine Lloyd stooping when moving around the place, if he does, as if he were constrained in his movements and anything he may think of. It feels like a mouse caught by a cat in a corner of a room, unable to escape.
Lloyd’s place is more characterized by what it does not have than by what it has. There is no telephone, not much food, and definitely no Wesson oil or Q-Tips, all to indicate that Lloyd’s place is devoid of activity. Even Inez’s surprise at the landlady’s not having any Q-Tips reinforce the unusual characteristics of the place. The landlady, presumably without babies, has Baby Oil. She also has a TV and a telephone, which make her household more usual.
Lloyd wears pajamas and at the end of the story will wear day clothes for a brief moment. His daily objects are the tiny refrigerator containing lunch meat and champagne, and of course the TV, which is always on. These objects define him as a stereotypical American male who does not know how to take care of himself, and also as a drunk. A TV, a bed, and a couch make for a passive existence.
Contrary to Lloyd, his wife Inez shows up with a bright spring outfit and a bag with sunflowers stitched on it. From this description, we can already infer that she has a positive outlook on life, has recently found freedom, and that the fact that she does not smile is related to seeing Lloyd. She also drives “their car” which hints that she has the better end of the separation. Even though Inez does not know how to solve Lloyd’s ear problem, she takes it in her charge and finally resolves it.
The landlady, an old woman who has lost her husband (and compares him to Lloyd) does not communicate with Lloyd, but does very well with Inez. She has the baby oil and the method for Inez to solve the ear problem. The landlady is seen lying on the floor of her living room, then outside gardening, and is heard talking to Inez.
The story is
about Lloyd, where he is now, and what he is doing about it. In his book Reading Raymond Carver, R.P. Runyon observes that there is
continuity in Carver’s collections of short stories, and that the marital
problems and alcoholism of the preceding stories come to a standstill in Careful.
The story immediately following it, Where
I’m calling From, takes place in a recovery house, a “drying-out facility,”
in a sort of logical sequence even though the stories are about different
people. Both this story and the story
preceding Careful, Vitamins, are narrated using the first
person, whereas Careful is narrated
using Lloyd’s point of view but with Lloyd as a third person detached from the
narrator.
Reading the story and transposing it to a first person narrative helps identify sentences that would simply not work had the story been written in that style. Most of the sentences work just as well but some start sounding “funny” in that it would seem a first-person narrator usually would be more in control of the story. A first-person narrator would not use sentences like “I whacked my head once more,” or “I did as I was told,” because they would put him in a weak position, unable to tell the story with authority. Lloyd’s character is weak, and should not be able to recount the story with the authority – and the language – that is necessary for a good story. The story would also not work in the first person because of the communication theme. Lloyd misses many times, voluntarily or not, what Inez says. Sometimes it is explicit, as when we could read what Inez says but Lloyd would ask her to repeat or he would not respond: it would not be possible for the first-person narrator to let us know about what she said while claiming not to have heard. Yet it is important for us to know what Inez wants to tell Lloyd (“We have things to discuss” – 272) because that is precisely what Lloyd wants to avoid. By treating Lloyd as a third person, the narrator can let us know what the issues really are.
The narrator does not detach himself from Lloyd completely, as he would not be able to give a full account of Lloyd’s situation. The consciousness of the story is that of Lloyd’s, and he is the single source of it. We follow Lloyd throughout the story, and never leave him: for example, the reader does not know what goes on downstairs when Inez interacts with the landlady except when Lloyd is listening from his room. This introduces a new issue, however, that of the narrator’s truthful reporting of what Inez says, as opposed to what Lloyd chooses to ignore. Lloyd sometimes answers with “What’d you say” which helps us understand that he is really not hearing well. We can assume that also when he does not answer. But the narrator casts doubts on Lloyd’s hearing when he says “he really hadn’t heard her” – so the reader may now ask whether there were times when Lloyd heard her but ignored her or pretended not to have heard. The narrator gives control back to Lloyd when instead of letting us know what Inez says, the narrator says “she said something that he didn’t catch” (272). We are led to believe that the narrator switches from truthful reporting of the dialogue to reporting it from Lloyd’s point of view. Carver may be teasing the reader, raising doubt with the fact that sometimes Lloyd just does not want to listen and may be hiding something he does not want us to hear.
Using free indirect discourse to report what goes on in Lloyd’s mind is very important in the construction of this story. Lloyd does not easily express his feelings, as we have seen from his reticence to engage in conversation, so the reader needs other mechanisms to understand better what is happening to Lloyd. We have seen from deictic information that he is cornered in a passive life where not much seems to matter. Knowing what he perceives about his wife (that she has changed), that talking bothers him, and that he sometimes shuts himself off enriches the narrative and focuses it on these matters rather than the plot.
The wife gone,
the problem of the day solved, Lloyd finds himself alone again in his little
dwellings. He is concerned that sleeping
on the wrong side of his head will reproduce the ear problem, and so he fears
the coming night. Searching solace in
his champagne, he realizes that his only plastic glass is tainted with baby oil
that he cannot wash off. He adapts again
to the situation by going to the bottle directly. It is only
Barthes,
Roland. Elements of Semiology.
Carver,
Raymond. Where I’m Calling From: New and Selected Stories.
Runyon,
Randolph. Reading Raymond Carver.
Verdonk,
Peter, and Weber, Jean-Jacques, ed. Twentieth-Century Fiction: From Text to
Context.
Web Sites:
E. & J.
Gallo Winery. Corporate Web Site (Product
Portfolio).
MSNBC. MSNBC Web Site (Today Show).