Read the instructor’s introduction<\/a> In \u201cThe Art of Evasion,\u201d Leon Edel complains that Ernest Hemingway\u2019s fiction evades emotion by featuring superficial characters who drink: \u201cIn Hemingway\u2019s novels people order drinks\u2014they are always ordering drinks\u2014then they drink, then they order some more . . . it is a world of superficial action and almost wholly without reflection\u201d (Edel 170). If Edel fails to recognize the deep emotional tension in Hemingway\u2019s \u201cHills Like White Elephants,\u201d where one of the characters reflects critically, \u201cthat\u2019s all we do isn\u2019t it\u2014look at things and try new drinks\u201d (211), then one can only imagine the qualms he would have with Raymond Carver\u2019s stories. As Charles May notes in \u201c\u2018Do You See What I\u2019m Saying?\u2019: The Inadequacy of Explanation and the Uses of Story in the Short Fiction of Raymond Carver,\u201d literary \u201ccritics often complain that there is no depth in Carver, that his stories are all surface detail\u201d (49). A self-avowed \u201cfan of Ernest Hemingway\u2019s short stories\u201d (\u201cFires\u201d 19), Carver also saturates his stories with alcohol; his characters often consume inordinate amounts of alcohol and generally struggle with emotional expression. Do Carver\u2019s inebriated and\/or alcoholic characters drink to evade emotional connections? Is his fictional world superficial and devoid of tension?<\/p>\n Carver\u2019s critical essays suggest a radically alternative approach to these issues. In \u201cOn Writing,\u201d Carver insists that in a short story, \u201cwhat creates tension . . . is partly the way the concrete words are linked together to make up the visible action of the story. But it\u2019s also the things that are left out, that are implied, the landscape just under the smooth (but sometimes broken and unsettled) surface of things\u201d (17). This suggests that critics who respond solely to the characters\u2019 consumption of alcohol to blunt or evade emotion on the \u201csurface of things\u201d miss much of the emotional tension created or revealed by alcohol underneath the \u201cvisible action\u201d of the story. In the same essay, Carver notes, \u201cI like it when there is some feeling of threat or sense of menace in short stories . . . There has to be tension, a sense that something is imminent\u201d (17). This essay will explore the many levels on which alcohol functions to enhance emotional expression and to create tension, a \u201csense of menace,\u201d in four of Carver\u2019s short stories. Analyzing the relationship between alcohol, emotion, and tension provides a key to the central conflict in these stories, for alcohol consumption is usually parallel and proportional to the rising action, leading to the stories\u2019 most emotionally profound climaxes. Alcohol often acts as a social lubricant, creating emotional bonds among strangers or acquaintances, releasing the characters\u2019 inhibitions and allowing them to reveal their deep fears and tensions in the stories they tell in their drunken state. Paradoxically, however, the characters\u2019 loss of control while under the influence of alcohol can also menace or destroy emotional bonds, relationships, and even bodies and lives. The mysterious, inescapable, paradoxical power of alcohol pervades Raymond Carver\u2019s fiction, shaping and complicating his characters\u2019 identities, relationships, and lives.<\/p>\n In \u201cWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Love,\u201d alcohol serves as a social lubricant that diminishes inhibitions, which allows hidden tensions and emotions to emerge. On the surface, this is a story of two couples drinking gin and talking about love by telling stories. As Charles May explains, through their stories the characters \u201cencounter those most basic mysteries of human experience that cannot be explained by rational means\u201d (40), including the intricate connection between love and violence. Mel\u2019s wife, Terri, reveals that \u201cthe man she lived with before she lived with Mel loved her so much he tried to kill her\u201d (138). This inner story drives tension within the larger story by uncovering a hidden strain between Terri and Mel. Terri begs, \u201cHe did love me though Mel. Grant me that . . . he was willing to die for it\u201d (140). After undergoing such trauma, she must cling to this view in order to cope. But Mel refuses her this, saying \u201cI sure as hell wouldn\u2019t call it love\u201d (142); he too claims ownership of the story because Terri\u2019s first husband had threatened his life several times. As Mel imbibes, he becomes less playful, less eager to reconcile their difference, and the tension mounts. Once intoxicated, Mel\u2019s \u201cconcrete words\u201d reflect a complete lack of inhibition, as he tells Terri to \u201cjust shut up for once in your life\u201d (146). The tension between them is unmasked as alcohol mediates between their outer and inner lives, revealing the opposing emotions warring \u201cjust under the smooth (but sometimes broken and unsettled) surface\u201d of their complex relationship (\u201cOn Writing\u201d 17).<\/p>\n As he drinks, Mel becomes more and more loquacious, gradually revealing his deep fears about the impermanence of love\u2014and the permanence of death. At the beginning of the story, when he is sober, Mel insists that \u201creal love is nothing less than spiritual love\u201d (137), but later he asks, \u201cWhat do any of us really know about love? . . . It seems to me we\u2019re just beginners at love\u201d (144). He now defines love as \u201cphysical\u201d and \u201csentimental,\u201d and no longer uses the word \u201cspiritual;\u201d he begins favoring cupiditas<\/em> over caritas<\/em>. Ultimately, the purpose of Mel\u2019s monologue is to come to terms with the fleeting nature of love and life. Freed of all of his inhibitions by alcohol, Mel reveals his true, bleak, frightening perception of love: \u201cif something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough. All this, all of this love we\u2019re talking about, it would just be a memory\u201d (145). This concept of ephemeral love differs markedly from the permanence, profoundness, and eternal devotion associated with spiritual love, and is drawn forth from Mel as a result of his drunkenness. Although Mel insists that he is sober, that \u201cI don\u2019t have to be drunk to say what I think. I mean, we\u2019re all just talking, right?\u201d (145), he actually does need alcohol to say what he really thinks. As a result of his drunkenness, we are exposed to a tension within him as he struggles with his idealized and realistic concepts of love, as well as with the terror of impermanence and death.<\/p>\n Mel acknowledges his own confusion about love as he introduces the other story-within-the-story, but has great difficulty conveying the emotional meaning of this story because alcohol progressively blurs his speech and thought processes. Mel, a cardiologist, recounts an old couple\u2019s struggle to survive after a drunk driver runs into their camper. He cannot finish his story because alcohol has robbed him of coherence. His language, the \u201cconcrete word,\u201d becomes crude and vulgar as he tries to prove his point about true love: \u201cEven after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed . . . I\u2019m telling you, the man\u2019s heart was breaking because he couldn\u2019t turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife . . . he couldn\u2019t look at the fucking woman\u201d (151). Alcohol has interfered with his thought process so significantly that he cannot articulate the emotional significance of his story; he can only ask, \u201cDo you see what I\u2019m saying?\u201d (151). He cannot explain that this is an example of the more permanent love he yearns for but fears he may never experience. The couple\u2019s deep spiritual love eludes his interpretive powers, and he destroys its purity with his profane language. This may appear to be emotional superficiality, but it is not; Mel is grappling with very deep emotions, both released and muddled by alcohol. The story ends abruptly, almost theatrically, when the gin runs out. Carver provides no resolution to the tension revealed under the influence of alcohol; he leaves the characters in the dark, listening only to their hearts beat.<\/p>\n \u201cChef\u2019s House\u201d also explores issues of impermanence, but tension arises from alcohol very differently in this story. In \u201cChef\u2019s House,\u201d not a single drop of alcohol is consumed, yet it is the ever-present menace just under the surface of the characters\u2019 lives. Nowhere is Carver\u2019s desire to create \u201ca sense that something is imminent\u201d (\u201cOn Writing,\u201d 17) more powerfully realized. Edna decides to give up everything to move back in with her ex-husband Wes, a recovering alcoholic. They move into a house owned by Chef, Wes\u2019s sponsor, and start spending a blissful summer there together. Edna yearns for permanence, symbolized by her wedding ring: \u201cI found myself wishing the summer wouldn\u2019t end. I knew better, but after a month of being with Wes in Chef\u2019s house, I put my wedding ring back on\u201d (28). Their bliss, threatened by the menace of Wes\u2019s thin grasp on sobriety, is disrupted when Chef informs Wes that they must move out of the house so that his daughter can move in. Carver brings the menace to life; the day Chef comes, \u201cclouds hung over the water\u201d (29). Under this cloud, Wes succumbs to his perceived destiny as an alcoholic: \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I can\u2019t talk like somebody I\u2019m not. I\u2019m not somebody else\u201d (32). When Wes decides to resume drinking, he chooses to end his relationship with Edna and to forget the emotional connection they shared. They must clean out Chef\u2019s house, and then \u201cthat will be the end of it\u201d (33). Wes\u2019s sense of inevitability underscores Carver\u2019s conviction that \u201cMenace is there, and it\u2019s a palpable thing\u201d in most people\u2019s lives (\u201cInterview with Raymond Carver\u201d 67). Wes and Edna both feel powerless against the irresistible draw, the mysterious menace, of alcohol.<\/p>\n Alcohol also menaces the characters\u2019 relationships and identities in \u201cWhere I\u2019m Calling From.\u201d Set in a drying-out facility, the story is driven forward by the characters\u2019 fear of the lure of alcohol, of a relapse, of the impermanence of sobriety (ominously, the narrator is on his second stay). The menace looms larger when the narrator witnesses a fellow addict\u2019s seizure, as his body adjusts to withdrawal from alcohol. This awakens the narrator\u2019s deep fears of losing control of his body and his life: \u201cBut what happened to Tiny is something I won\u2019t ever forget. Old Tiny flat on the floor, kicking his heels. So every time this little flitter starts up anywhere, I draw some breath and wait to find myself on my back, looking up, somebody\u2019s fingers in my mouth\u201d (129). To distract himself from his body\u2019s cravings and his battle for self-control, the narrator drinks coffee and listens to a newcomer\u2019s story: \u201cJ.P quits talking. He just clams up. What\u2019s going on? I\u2019m listening. It\u2019s helping me relax, for one thing. It\u2019s taking me away from my own situation\u201d (134). Ironically, in this story, alcohol acts as a social lubricant, but not as a result of intoxication; talking and being social are the only things protecting these men from their need for alcohol. The men stay in control by telling each other about times when they had no control. J.P. remembers he had everything he wanted in life, \u201cbut for some reason\u2014who knows why we do what we do?\u2019\u2014his drinking picks up . . . then a time comes, he doesn\u2019t know why, when he makes the switch from beer to gin-and-tonic . . . Things got out of hand. But he kept on drinking. He couldn\u2019t stop\u201d (133-4). Alcohol, which gave him the confidence to ask for his first kiss, destroyed J.P.\u2019s marriage to the love of his life, his happy home and children, and the job of his dreams. Most threatening of all, neither man can understand why he threw it all away. They tell their stories to stave off this tension, to try to attain control over the impermanence of sobriety and the menace that has shaped and ruined their lives.<\/p>\n \u201cCathedral\u201d presents alcohol not as a destructive force, but as a constructive one, a means to build emotional connections between strangers, a way of liberating the mind and expanding consciousness. Alcohol functions in a positive capacity in this story, releasing tension, liberating the narrator, allowing him to see and connect in a way he is only open to do because he is stoned. The story opens with tension at its peak, with the narrator in his most jealous and closed-minded state. A friend of his wife, a man she has a close emotional connection with, a blind man, is coming to visit. The wife used to read to the blind man, and after she left, she kept in close contact, constantly sending and receiving tapes on which they would tell each other every detail about their lives. The narrator is bothered by their closeness, that \u201cthey\u2019d become good friends, my wife and the blind man,\u201d (210), irritated when his wife dismisses his jealousy with the retort, \u201cyou don\u2019t have any<\/em> friends\u201d (212). He is most affected by the fact that \u201con the last day in office, the blind man asked if he could touch her face. She agreed to this. She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose\u2014even her neck! She never forgot it. She tried to write a poem about it [as she did] after something really important happened to her\u201d (210). Her ineradicable memory of this intimate touch awakens her husband\u2019s jealousy and fears of betrayal and abandonment, which intensifies his disgust with blindness: \u201cAnd his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed . . . A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to\u201d (209). The superficiality of his vision is underscored by his lengthy description of the physical appearance of the blind man, which is salient in Carver\u2019s writing because characters are typically minimally described.<\/p>\n As the story progresses, drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana release this tightly strung man\u2019s inhibitions, facilitate male bonding, and finally expand and deepen his narrow, superficial vision. From the start, alcohol is introduced in a positive light, called a \u201cpastime,\u201d and received good-naturedly, even jokingly, by the blind man. Although the narrator begins drinking to drown out his jealousy of the emotional connection between his wife and the blind man, the end result of his intoxication, social lubrication, allows the man to reach an epiphany. Because his wife is smaller, she promptly falls asleep under the influence of the alcohol and drugs they all consume together, and neither man wakes her. When she no longer speaks, the source of tension between the two men is relieved and they are able to begin bonding. As the narrator drinks, he begins to appreciate the company of the blind man, and gradually realizes the emotional emptiness of his own life: \u201cevery night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep. My wife and I hardly ever went to bed at the same time\u201d (222). Drinking and bonding with the blind man allow the narrator to confront his own loneliness and emotional evasions, and his mind and life start to open to new possibilities.<\/p>\n Gradually, guided by the blind man\u2019s more expansive vision, the narrator begins thinking beyond the confines of his own narrow reality. As they \u201cwatch\u201d a television program about cathedrals together, he suddenly remarks to the blind man, \u201csomething has occurred to me. Do you have any idea what a cathedral is?\u201d (223). Although he describes the physical appearance of cathedrals, the narrator cannot capture their spiritual essence and begins to realize the limits of his perfectly healthy vision. Under the liberating influence of alcohol and drugs, he responds positively to the blind man\u2019s suggestion that they draw a cathedral together, and allows himself to experience a physical and emotional connection that would have disgusted his sober self: \u201cHis fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now\u201d (228). This intimacy of hand touching hand, one man\u2019s fingers riding another\u2019s, recalls and transforms his vision of the blind man\u2019s hand touching his wife\u2019s face. Facing his deepest fear of real intimacy, the narrator inhabits and experiences the other man\u2019s blindness; he closes his eyes, and then does not want to open them again, because he \u201cdidn\u2019t feel like [he] was inside anything\u201d (228). He feels completely free, no longer possessed by his jealousy, tension, or fear. The alcohol endows him with a liberating vulnerability he would never have been brave enough to reach were he not intoxicated. Although this story, too, ends with darkness, it is created by the narrator closing his eyes in an act of communion; the darkness signifies not unresolved tension or emotional evasion, but connection and revelation. The narrator has achieved a profound transformation of vision while under the influence of alcohol.<\/p>\n Alcohol possesses a paradoxical power in Raymond Carver\u2019s short stories. The characters use alcohol to blunt their fear of death and the impermanence of life and love. But their consumption of alcohol in many cases brings them closer to death, and can just as quickly ruin love as stimulate it. Alcohol allows them to loosen up, to say and do things they would otherwise never be able to do, to tell their stories, but the intoxication robs them of their coherence. If they are able to finish their stories, it is possible that they won\u2019t remember the profound nature of their intoxicated experiences in a few short hours. Although alcohol acts as a social lubricant that allows the characters to connect with one another through stories, it also creates and surfaces tensions between loved ones and friends, and can even end up breaking connections. Alcohol gives and takes, pushes and pulls, and places the stories in what Carver in his essay \u201cOn Writing\u201d calls \u201crelentless motion\u201d (17), driving tension forward as a sometimes intimate, sometimes menacing cosmic force that is nearly impossible for many of the characters to resist, control, or comprehend.<\/p>\n Carver, Raymond. Cathedral<\/span>. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1983. Print.<\/p>\n — \u201cFires.\u201d Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories<\/span>. Santa Barbara: Capra, 1983. 19\u201330.\u00a0Print.<\/p>\n — \u201cOn Writing.\u201d Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories<\/span>. Santa Barbara: Capra, 1983.\u00a013\u201318. Print.<\/p>\n — \u201cWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Love.\u201d What We Talk About\u00a0<\/span>When We Talk About Love: Stories<\/span>. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. 137\u201354. Print.<\/p>\n Edel, Leon, and Robert P. Weeks, Ed. \u201cThe Art of Evasion.\u201d Hemingway: A Collection of Critical Essays<\/span>. Eaglewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1963. 169\u2013171. Print.<\/p>\n Hemingway, Ernest. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Edition<\/span>. <\/em>New York: Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons, 1987. Print.<\/p>\n May, Charles E. \u201c\u2018Do You See What I\u2019m Saying?\u2019: The Inadequacy of Explanation and the Uses of Story in the Short Fiction of Raymond Carver.\u201d The Yearbook of English Studies<\/span> (2001): 39\u201349. Print.<\/p>\n McCaffery, Larry, Sinda Gregory, and Raymond Carver. \u201cAn Interview with Raymond Carver.\u201d Mississippi Review<\/span> (1985): 62\u201382. Print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sara Kornfeld Simpson Read the instructor’s introduction Read the writer’s comments and bio Download this essay In \u201cThe Art of Evasion,\u201d Leon Edel complains that Ernest Hemingway\u2019s fiction evades emotion by featuring superficial characters who drink: \u201cIn Hemingway\u2019s novels people order drinks\u2014they are always ordering drinks\u2014then they drink, then they order some more . . […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4801,"featured_media":0,"parent":9553,"menu_order":9,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9596"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4801"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9596"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10018,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9596\/revisions\/10018"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nRead the writer’s comments and bio<\/a>
\nDownload this essay<\/a><\/p>\nWorks Cited<\/h2>\n