An Analysis Of Raymond Carver's The Bath

Raymond Carver’s The Bath is a revised version of his early work of A Small, Good Thing. In his two pieces of the short story, the length of the story significantly varied as The Bath is a lot shorter. Moreover, his former work has more detailed emotional expressions while The Bath lacks communications and leaves to the reader a suspenseful ending. The story begins in a third person view with a mother has her son’s birthday cake made to order at a bakery. Then his son is hit by a car when crossing the road. The mother and father come to hospital and exchange words from the doctor. Finally, the story ends with an unfinished ending which doesn’t show any sign of boy’s fate but a strange phone call that says the son’s name. There are several things

First it is shown by the description of the baker’s apron, which is “a heavy thing with loops that went under his arms and around his back and then crossed in front again where they were tied in a very thick knot”(Carver). Such detailed description usually catches the reader 's eyes and leaves a vivid image. Then, the reader will be wondering why is the baker wearing such an awkwardly designed apron. It is strange about this apron. Carver is using the strangeness of the apron to bring out the suspenseful character of the baker, paving the road to the suspenseful ending. Furthermore, when Scotty is hit by the car, his friend is still standing there holding his potato chips, wondering “if he should finish the rest or continue on to school”(Carver). It is the extremely unusual reaction when his friend has just gotten into an accident. His eccentric tranquility implies adds more weirdness to the story. In addition, Scotty’s mother’s reaction is totally the opposite of what a real life person would do. Instead of screaming and taking her son to the hospital immediately, the mother calmly sits on the sofa with Scotty and kindly watches him falling asleep. Lastly, during the hospital scene, despite the doctor’s perfunctory console, the parents take the turn to go home and take showers, which seems absolutely irrelevant to their son’s unknown injury(Carver). In addition, they both receive strange phone calls that are possibly from the baker(Carver). Instead of explaining his purpose of making the call, the baker’s language is succinct and almost in a scary tone. All these eccentric settings add more mysterious environment to the story, giving the reader opportunity to interpret the story in their own