So Much Water So Close to Home
The short story "So Much Water So Close to Home" is taken from Raymond Carver's book of short stories: "Short Cuts", which was published in 1993. Raymond Carver, who in my mind is the master of short stories and essays, grew up in America where he lived together with his family and friends, just like all his characters in "Short Cuts". Carver takes you right into normal peoples´ living room, where he lets you sit down and watch what is really going on inside the four walls of the house. He is able to get the audience`s participation, and in this story he got mine right away. By having only read a few lines I knew this was a story which on the outside looked like a common and well organized family, but underneath and behind closed doors something wasn't as it should be. Carver convinced me, after having read "Short Cuts", that in any perfect family you will find a bit of alcoholism, infidelity, self-doubt, and ketchup.In "So Much..." I am dealing whit a family who starts to have serious problems like: Distrust, judging people too quickly, being able to accept that there is no right or wrong way, and when ones life has been set in motion and just waiting for something to change it. The Family also seems to have problems with asking for help, advise, love, and understanding, but most of all disenfranchisement because they can't go back in time and change what happened, they have to live with the consequences. No wonder that the family suddenly has to deal with all these problems, which are also very important themes of the story. The story is told from the first person narrator's point of view, a woman called Claire who is Stuart's wife. When Stuart, in the middle of the night, comes back from his fishing trip she knows he has got something on his mind and the atmosphere isn't as good as it could be. He doesn't talk to her until the next day where a flashback technique is used to tell us what really happened. Stuart and his fishing mates found a young girl's body in a river close to where they were fishing, having fun, and drinking. The fact that they found the body isn't so much of a problem, but that they didn't call the police right away is going to have big consequences. They stayed and didn't seemed to be bothered about having a dead girl lying next to them; they even managed to forget all about her until they left again. I am sure I would react just like Clair. She is in chock, doesn't know what to think, gets suspicious, and how on earth could four dissent family men not thinking of calling for help instead of being so selfish and put themselves in first place? Lots of thoughts are running through her head when she gets involved in the situation, but some how she manage to keep her head clear. She puts everything in order, and like it says in the text, " Three important things happened.." and " Two things are for certain…" She is a lot more agitated and upset about the whole situation, and who blames her for behaving like she does? It would make me angry to see that my husband is not at all ashamed of himself, and like to go on as nothing has ever happened.
Looking at it from Stuart's point of view, I think Stuart wants to show us that there is always two sides to the story, and in his situation there is no right or wrong way in dealing with such a problem. They could have chosen to call the police, but first and foremost they had come all the way to Naches River to have some fun, and it is a sort of a tradition they have, so nothing and nobody is going to ruin their trip that's for sure! In a way he just shows us that the unexpected shows up when you least expect it, and sometimes you act a lot different than people would expect you to do. In his situation I think he acted wrong. I mean it would be like one out of a million who wouldn't call the police if they found a dead body. I can easily imagine the four men sitting around the fire with bottles of beers in their hands and have no compassion or sympathy for the dead girl. I find it extremely repulsive, distasteful, and absurd. I think Claire would use the same words about her husband, and she also gets the question about whether Stuart did kill the girl or not brought out to the reader. She gets suspicious and the same do I. Think about it; four men, alone, far away from public view, getting drunk, and then this young beautiful girl shows up…. I guess everybody can imagine what is about to happen next.
Claire starts to think a lot about her own life and her view of the world today. A world where no one trusts each other and no one cares about each other anymore, and her own life stuck in a moment she can't get out of, everything has turned into an old habit, and she even asks herself if she whishes to be somebody else. She is having a minor psychological breakdown. She is running back and forward in time, starts to think about small and unimportant things, she is overprotective of their son, suddenly a small word like love has a big meaning, she goes to the funeral of the dead girl, taking distance from her husband. She sleeps alone, she doesn't like him touching her, and she can't take him seriously when he offers to help her. When he lays his hand on her, and shows her that he is sexually interested, she steps back and says, "STOP" which tells us that his hands who may have touched or even killed a girl are not going to touch her and it gives her a thrill every time he does so. Stuart keeps being patient, likes to help, and the fact that he says,"… that's what husbands are for", shows that he can see and feel what she is going through, but she keeps stepping away from him, and that's where Stuart gets angry and loses his temper. He should give her time to think and leave her alone, but I see nothing wrong in him being polite and showing that he does care. Somehow I think she is overreacting, she has to try to face the mess the family has ended up with, and then open up her mouth and tell her own husband what thoughts and ideas are troubling her. I am sure that if they both would let each other help one another and really get down to the bottom of it, then they would work things out, and I even think that their lives would be a lot better than it was before. They need to show each other some trust, honesty, and love. If they are able to do so I think they have a safe and bright future together. All families have problems, and there is no such problem which can't be solved just as long as both partners are willing and positive about the problem being solved.With this story Raymond Carver has just showed me and everybody else that people find it easy to judge each other extremely hard when they do the unexpected and abnormal. I mean, for a while he even succeeded in making me believe that one of the four men could have raped and killed the girl. Now I am sure they didn't kill her, but as I have said before there is always two sides of the story, and people are free to believe what they want to believe. That's what Carver is really good at, he makes us look through these peoples´ window, people who we are all able to recognize in our every day-life, people we thought could never do anything wrong, and people we may even be able to see in our own home. It is so real and that's what I really like about his stories.
The three weeks where I have been reading Carver's "Short Cuts", I have really turned into a Carver fan because you are able to find so many themes in his stories and you never know how the story is going to end before you have read the last sentence, which gives you a sense of surprise. You will find a lot of underlying messages, and no matter how dark a subtext it is, you may find some beauty, hope, and sympathy with his characters that he shows great respect. That's fantastic writing.