An Analysis of the Ending of Raymond Carver’s Text Everything Stuck to Him

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“They were kids themselves, but they were crazy in love, this eighteen-year-old boy and this seventeen year old girl when they married.” (Stuck, 1327) Everything Stuck to Him by Raymond Carver was just one short story in a very popular collection entitled, What We Talk about When We Talk about Love. The story begins in Italy with a young girl asking her father to tell her a story about her childhood. He responds by telling her of what his young life was like with her mother. This text explores the themes of responsibility, maturity, commitment, choices, and above all, unity. Carver utilizes this frame narrative to explore a vast world of change, ending on a note that often leaves readers feeling ripped off due to its lack of an immediate point. At first glance, this text appears to be nearly completely pointless, coming across as if it was pieced together in a few minutes, and holds no real meaning at all. However, upon further inspection, Everything Stuck to Him seems to hold so much meaning that it would take an endless amount of time to pull apart all of the different interpretations of the text. Raymond Carver’s short story Everything Stuck to Him possesses multiple potential interpretations, some of both successful and unsuccessful endings.
In order to develop a real understanding of Raymond Carver’s text, the complex relationship between the father and the daughter must first be understood. The relationship between the girl and her father is the foundation of the entire story, and the ending cannot possibly be understood without a full recognition of how they interact. It is evident that there has been a vast change between the father when he was younger and when he was older with his daughter. Throughout the story that h...

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... defined by the choices they make. There are critical moments in this text where people must make agonizing choices that are brought on by moments that are continuously changing just outside of our control. Raymond Carver actually suggests that the only thing that we can actually control about these changes, is how we react to them, and that is something that he displays very well throughout the course of this text. Change is the only certainty that exists within the world, and accepting change is something that everyone has to learn to do at one point or another. A critical part of being a human being is possessing the ability to recognize the ways in which the choices you make define you. This lesson is something that radiates very strongly from Carver’s text, regardless of whether or not the text is considered one of success for the characters, or one of failure.

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