Though what happens in "A Small, Good Thing" is heart wrenching, Carver has such a good way of taking the extraordinary and making it relatable. He just describes the events as they happen, as if the gruff interaction between the woman and the baker has just as much of a chance of occurring in life as a child being struck in a hit-and-run. One minute the story is about a child and his friend walking to school, passing back and forth a bag of chips, and the next minute he is in a coma.
Tragedy is like that I guess. We always wish we could go back and cherish those moments before life took a dramatic turn, but we can't. I actually feel sick reading back at the beginning of the story, before the child was hit. It reminds me of the mother who pushed her son out of the way to save him on Main Street last year.
The baker is made very human as well, though. I used to be the overnight baker at Tim Horton's, so I can relate to the sense of callousness created by long hours of solitude and ovens that are "endlessly full and endlessly empty." Sometimes you forget the purpose of life, and it takes a shocking event to make you really reevaluate what is important.
It always seems I am in really mundane places performing menial tasks when I am handed "whopper" pieces of tragic news, like a death in the family. Then you ponder it later and think, boy I really don't live in the movies... Which is tragic in and of itself.
ReplyDelete...oh my goodness.
ReplyDeleteI just wrote for like an hour commenting on this and it asked me what profile, I said google and all my words went away and it took me to the google homepage.
technology, man. Can't live with it, can't live without it. am I right?
I will try to rewrite my brilliance, but I doubt it will be as fantastic as it was. I still want to post on the other stories I read this week. (oh, and for the record, I totally read this when I was supposed to, I just forgot about the blog. I am a bad reading group partner and will try to not let that happen again)
Ok,
First, I knew my mom was dying, so I sort of planned how I was going to react when I got the news, and guess what--I did not do that at all.
It was quiet, everything was so quiet and the neighbors made us casseroles. That's what I thought of when the baker was feeding them. Something about tragedy makes people feed each other.
I wonder, now there is no evidence in the text to support this, if the baker is the driver.
Images that stuck out to me: Scotty's legs kicking as if he were climbing something when he was hit, Scotty waking up for a second before he dies and when the father puts all Scotty's toys away because they will no longer be used. :(
The idea that there was only one time when Ann and felt like she and Howard were on the same page also made me sad.
In my epic original post, I also commented about the family Ann meets in the waiting room and how she would like to talk more about her situation but, like the baker, says nothing.
I also wrote about how tragedy can bring people together and that Ann assumed the he had made many cakes for his family--turns out he had no family and feeding Ann and Howard sticky buns when they came to yell at him was probably the first time he was able to console anyone.
He took the role of the parent he never was, giving Ann and Howard a chance to be the children-putting them in a place where the sorrow and pain of losing their son could--for a second--be put on the back burner.
I am not sure if I covered everything I wanted to say, I am mad at our blog right now and am having a hard time formulating sentences.
...thank god.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I hate when that happens.
ReplyDeleteI like your statement that tragedy makes us want to feed each other. That is so true. I wonder what chemicals in our bodies make us hungry and make us want to drink when we are that sad? It is almost as if we are assuring ourselves of our vitality by doing things that living creatures do. We eat. We drink. We walk around and make noises that don't convey any kind of meaning necessarily. Grief also makes us unquestioning religious participants as well. We all talk about "a better place" and so on, and it seems like such a perfunctory reaction. When I go through the Roledex of grief reactions I have personally experienced from folks, I think perhaps food is the best and fullest expression of condolence.
especially casseroles and sticky buns. Sadness and carbohydrates go hand in hand.
ReplyDelete(**I just pictured the chemical formula for dough holding hands with the chemical formula for pasta. Completely unrelated, I know, but wrap yer noodle around that.)