Discomfort, Irritation, and Confusion of The Bath Essay -- Wife of Bat

  Discomfort, Irritation, and Confusion of The Bath          People argon living robots. They meet the norm. They go with the latest trend. They walk the latest walk and talk the latest talk. Even the brilliant ideas that sprout from peoples minds are a combination of other peoples thoughts and ideas friends, family and the media are the greatest influences. When a situation that is out of the norm confronts people, they are suddenly caught off guard, and instead of dealing with the situation, they shy away from it in attempt to pass along to their protective glass case the norm. Raymond Carver forces his reviewers to face discomfort, irritation, and confusion through reading The Bath. His spoken communication is dry, and the story is short. The characters do not have names, the language does not flow well, and the ending leaves the reader hanging. The message of the story is vague, and the plot lacks depth however, the details that this stor y reveals through the concise language surpasses any detail that A Small, Good affaire reveals through its abundance of words.   To begin with, The Bath lacks much usage of adverbs. Adverbs typically help describe an action so that the reader better understands either the character or the situation. Clearly, the point of not including adverbs in this short story is to force the reader to focus on what happens instead of how something happens. A short story is something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing (Carver 558). A reader should not feel connected with the characters in the story because that is not the composes main concern. An author simply attempts to convey a message through some words in a page that is arranged in ... ... intentions for A Small, Good topic differ from his intentions for The Bath.   Throughout The Bath the reader struggles with many uncomfortable feelings, and although the reader may not immediately realize that he/she nooky subs ume to the story more than he/she knows, a relationship is present. The Bath does a good job of putting the reader in the characters shoes. A Small, Good Thing, on the other hand, provides a comforting feeling of knowing everything that happens, and knowing that everything works out at the end. Since there is a beginning and an ending to the story, the reader can conclude a meaningful message from the story and relate or apply it to his/her life. Overall, The Bath sets the mood of the story better than A Small, Good Thing because of its concise language and its focus on the glimpse instead of the big picture.