Patricio Acosta
Essay #3
April 15 2014
Are You a Doctor?
The story named “Are you a Doctor” by Raymond Carver is a very short yet interesting story. This story is about a man, Arnold Breit, who receives a phone called from a mistaken user. The woman that called Arnold, Clara Holt, was trying to reach someone else but the number she dialed was the wrong number. After a couple minutes of small talk and superficial conversations, the woman got the courage to ask the Arnold to come over to her house. The story seems simple and it is. It is simple and also very interesting because the writer managed to add suspense and doubt to the story to hook the reader. I believe that the most valuable and entertaining things of this story is the doubts Raymond Carver leave unanswered throughout the story. Most readers like the ambiguity more than anything in the short story.
Some readers are intrigued by the mystery of the story, they asked questions like: who is that woman? what does she want? They keep reading looking for the answers of the questions raised in their minds. The reason we want to keep reading is a normal human drive.
The desire to keep reading the story is present because we want ” to achieve ‘cognitive closure.’ This term was coined by the social psychologist Arie Kruglanski, who eventually defined it as “individuals’ desire for a firm answer to a question and an aversion toward ambiguity,” a drive for certainty in the face of a less than certain world.” (1) Humans have a drive that makes them want answers. Since the beginning of humans, humans become motivated by uncertainty to get answers and that same drive is that desire to keep reading the story that presents uncertainty.
Carver presents uncertainty by throught...
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...ellectual challenge. Carver doesn’t tell us what happens exactly because it leaves some doubt and that gets the brain working and intellect going. When Arnold arrived to the mysterious house of Clara, the reader expected the meeting to be important because Clara said she had to say something to Arnold. As the encounter between Clara and Arnold progresses, it because more evident that the only reason Clara wanted Arnold to come over is because she is lonely and wants a man and that it is a very pointless meeting. If Craver would have just told the reader what was going on, the short story would be less interesting. It is the uncertainty that makes the reader figure out what is going on, and when they piece the puzzles together,
delaying the answer
(1) http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/why-we-need-answers.html
Patricio Acosta
reader creates “supplementary meaning” to the text by unconsciously setting up tension, also called binary opposition. Culler describes this process in his statement “The process of thematic interpretation requires us to move from facts towards values, so we can develop each thematic complex, retaining the opposition between them” (294). Though supplementary meaning created within the text can take many forms, within V...
Carver tells the story in first person of a narrator married to his wife. Problems occur when she wants a friend of hers, an old blind man, to visit for a while because his wife has died. The narrator's wife used to work for the blind man in Seattle when the couple was financial insecure and needed extra money. The setting here is important, because Seattle is associated with rain, and rain symbolically represents a cleansing or change. This alludes to the drastic change in the narrator in the end of the story. The wife and blind man kept in touch over the years by sending each other tape recordings of their voices which the narrator refers it to being his wife's "chief means or recreation" (pg 581).
1. Growing up we all heard stories. Different types of stories, some so realistic, we cling onto them farther into our lives. Stories let us see and even feel the world in different prespectives, and this is becuase of the writter or story teller. We learn, survive and entertain our selves using past experiences, which are in present shared as stories. This is why Roger Rosenblatt said, "We are a narrative species."
The Storytelling Animal is an expository non-fiction book by Jonathan Gottschall analyzing the history of stories and human’s attraction to them. It was published in 2012 and thus contains many up-to-date references and comparisons. I believe Gottschall’s main objective in writing this book is to bring us all to the conclusion that he has reached in his research. Throughout the entirety of his book, Gottschall effectively pulls us back to main ideas he wants us to understand and accept, that we are innately storytelling animals, that are addicted to stories ourselves, have always been and will always be, by using topics that build upon one another, using relatable examples, and supporting arguments with research and studies.
Jamison describes another medical figure in her life that she referred to as Dr. M. Dr. M was Jamison’s primary cardiologist, a figure who is involved in some of the most intimate details of Jamison’s life. However, Jamison describes Dr. M by saying she, “…wasn’t personal at all” (14). Dr. M would actually record personal information about Jamison on a tape recorder, however, Jamison would hear Dr. M referring to her as “patient” instead of by her name. This example demonstrates that Dr. M was indeed putting in the minimal effort needed to keep her clients, however, no additional effort was put into the process of learning about her patients. Jamison says that, “…the methods of her mechanics [were] palpable between us…” (18). Dr. M would not even put any effort into disguising her lack of interest of getting to know Jamison. This atmosphere of apathy that is exuded by Dr. M naturally causes Jamison to retract from Dr. M, which creates an environment that is not good for cultivating
The point of view from the narrators perspective, highlights how self-absorbed and narrow-minded he is. “They’d married, lived and worked together, slept together—had sex, sure—and then the blind man had to bury her. All this without his having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked like. It was beyond my understanding” (Carver...
In much of The Things They Carried, stories are retold time and time again. One reason for this is the idea of keeping a story’s story-truth alive. In “Good Form,” O’Brien differentiates what he calls story-truth from happening-truth. Story-truth seems to give us a better understanding of O’Brien’s sentiment in a particular story even though the story itself may not be true at all. On the other hand, happening-truth is what actually happened in the story, but may not contain as much emotional authenticity as story-truth. According to O’Brien, story-truth is therefore truer than happening-truth. Relating back to storytelling, O’Brien retells stories continuously to maintain their sentiment and emotional value. Without this continuous repetition, this sentiment fades away and the emotional value of the story is lost.
The accumulazing of words and sentence patterns can’t be ignored. What’s more, curiosity leads us to further study. Looking for more relative information after reading a story is necessary to learn English well.
In conclusion, it is hard to grasp the true meaning of the story unless the story is read a second time because of the author's style of writing.
When I read the profiles of John as an introvert and as an extrovert, my mind kept returning to the thought that both of these stories were about the same man; that each told the story of that man in different circumstances. Immediately, my mind led me down the road of creating the story behind John. Was the extrovert John his normal persona, but introvert John showed up on a melancholy day? Or perhaps, Jon was usually very introverted, but we caught him on a particularly optimistic day in the extroverted scenario? I found myself wanting more details; wondering why he had not spoken with the pretty girl from last night. Why did he need the stationery? How does he know so many people in the paper store? Obviously, he is not a total recluse if he had the opportunity to see the pretty girl. My reaction is explained easily enough by author Malcolm Gladwell, "We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for." (Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking , 2005) Gladwell clarifies that when we are missing the details we crave to fill these gaps in the stories, we feel the need to create them ourselves. He further defines this behavior as “rapid cognition” which is, “…the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions.” (Gladwell, 2005) We utilize rapid cognition on a daily basis to judge people and situations all around us. It is a subconscious process in which we size up a person or situation in approximately t...
Carver tells the story mainly through what happens in the story, rather than through the narrator’s perspective or the characters’ emotion and personalities. He connects all the events in the story in a logical way by using the elements rising action and climax. Therefore, he drew the reader 's’ attention and raise their curiosity toward what would happen next in the story. At the end, Carver finishes the story with an open ending which is a great way to end the story when the characters are not fully described in both emotion and personality. Therefore, the readers couldn’t predict what the characters would do to solve the conflict. By ending the story with an open ending, Carver allows the readers to create their own ending and satisfy with their own
As the story begins, the unnamed doctor is introduced as one who appears to be strictly professional. “Aas often, in such cases, they weren’t telling me more than they had to, it was up to me to tell them; that’s why they were spending three dollars on me.” (par. 3) The doctor leaves the first impression that he is one that keeps his attention about the job and nothing out of the ordinary besides stating his impressions on the mother, father and the patient, Mathilda. Though he does manage to note that Mathilda has a fever. The doctor takes what he considers a “trial shot” and “point of departure” by inquiring what he suspects is a sore throat (par. 6). This point in the story, nothing remains out of the ordinary or questionable about the doctor’s methods, until the story further develops.
Raymond Carver uses strategic dialogue and point of view to articulate themes in his short stories. Another tactic Carver uses in his writing is analyzing basic human skills such as the ability to define love through intimate relations between characters that reveal deeper meaning. In the short stories “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” and “Cathedral,” he investigates relationships and how the characters develop the true meaning of love. While reading these two short stories the reader is able to comprehend the similarities that draw Carver’s works together. Through these stories the reader is also able to understand his outlook on love and human kinship. Carver uses certain strategies and techniques that allow him to bring a parallel between his different stories, but there are also definite things that set each story apart.
We are shaped by stories because we learn through “mythistory” which is history mixed with mythological stories to help learn about our past and ourselves since the beginning of the storytelling times (125). Therefore, storytelling has been a part of human society since the beginning of time. Humans are creatures of habit and that means they will continue to tell and live through stories because that is what they know. Gottschall eloquently states this idea throughout the novel by reiterating that humans learn from the stories told by the ancestors. Furthermore, that is why we continue to tell stories because the more we can relate to the topic at the hand the more willing a person is to continue to work towards the goal or dream. Additionally, it one can relate to the topic several others can at the same time, because whether it be reading, music, or film people everywhere are watching therefore they are connecting (137). Human instinct is to connect to on other; that attribute comes from years of stories telling children about how they are only as strong as the group they are with. Our lives are shaped by stories because our lives are about being connected to one other around the world because if one is not connect then one is not important to the world they think. Therefore, as previously mentioned stories are a
I also often think for important aspect of the storytelling consists of getting each audience member to subconsciously (or consciously) ask himself or herself a series of questions. If viewers are confused and asking themselves structural or procedural questions (“Why is this happening? Why doesn’t this person flow smoothly into what I already know? Why are the characters doing things that seem out of character or stupid?”), they’re constantly being taken out of the narrative and can’t fully absorb what the storytellers are trying to do. I find that when I’m asking