#26- So Much Water So Close To Home- Raymond Carver
This is the last story in Carver’s collection, Fires. It’s a story about violence, apathy, shame,
and isolation. Stuart and his three
fishing buddies find the dead body of a young woman raped and murdered in the
stream. Feeling there is nothing they
can do to help, they leave her there tied to the shore while they drink, fish
and play out their weekend. After
calling the authorities when it is more convenient, their names get printed in
the papers as having found the body and they return to their lives.
The problems for Stuart begin when his wife gets appalled at
his indifference to such a horrid occurrence.
She reevaluates her life with this man.
The body becomes a metaphor for their relationship, or Stuart’s feelings
towards her in general; it’s an abused dead body, floating face down, tied up
just enough so it wont float away, and will stay there until it is a more
convenient time to get rid of. She
imagines herself in the body of the dead woman floating face-down in the stream.
The repressed, non-communicative interactions between these
two is smothering. Something again that
she realizes later when she has scary moment with an over aggressive male
stranger trying to “help” her in her car.
“I want to smother…I’m a smothering cant you see”
It begins with violence. Stuart admits early in their
courtship that: “someday this affair…will end in violence.” When he is unable to answer the simple
questions of their son he “[wants] to shake him until he cries.” He gets verbally abusing when she doesn’t
agree with him, physically abusing when she doesn’t want to touch him. She herself turns to violence as a form of
communication when all else fails breaking dishes or slapping him in the face.
Violence begets violence, shame begets shame, and apathy
reigns when we don’t admit that either one exists. And most times nothing
changes if all you do is wait for a more convenient time to take care of the
dead body floating in the river.
“Nothing will change for Stuart and me.” Sadly there is too much truth in this story.
Notable Passage: “…if I was somebody else I’d be afraid I
might not like who I was”
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