English Response to Raymond Carver PDF

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Kanza Ahmad Response to Raymond Carver’s “A Small, Good Thing” This reading did not go the way I expected it to, or what I imagined from it to be from reading just the first paragraph. Starting off, I expected just a simple story about a birthday party, some cheerful event, and possibly a lesson learned from the entire event. When Howard entered the story and things took a bad turn, Raymond Carver really made me, the reader, feel like I was part of the entire emotional roller coaster with all the details. I liked how he emphasized the little detail of what the doctors and nurses were wearing, what the announcements in the hospital were at the time being, and also what everyone was doing around Ann and Howard. Even though I’m not a parent yet, Carver made me realize the troubles and worrying a parent would go through when it’s child is sick or hurt or even worst, in the hospital. He took us through the entire journey from the phone call a parent gets, to how their world falls apart when their child isn’t there with them anymore. It’s like taking your most prized possession, a human being you created, and just within moments, its taken away from you. What was even more unexpected was what the baker did at the end for the couple, it felt like he glued their entire falling world back together and I think we all need someone like that. Everyone is lead to someone at one point in their life who fixes their world, maybe if its even just for the moment being, but they fix it together and make the person feel like it’s going to be okay. Through this entire story and the emotional roller coaster Carver takes the reader, his moral of the story would be that tough obstacles come along everyone’s pathway, big or small, but its how you hold yourself up at the end and how you overcome the obstacle in life, and how the people around you support you or help you through it. What the baker did wasn’t necessary,

but he did it out of care and love, because he knew what it felt like to be left alone, he knew the struggle the couple was going through and what their feelings must have been. Sometimes we need to stop for a moment and realize what’s happening around us, because what we find to be very important at the moment might be the one thing that’s hurting someone else. We as people tend to hurt each other more than we do good to one another, and it’s all because of ignorance to the fact that our words can have bigger consequences than we realize. The baker didn’t realize that by calling this couple for the cake he invested time in, he was only hurting them instead of sending them a rude reminder to come get the cake. We just need to be more aware of what we do in our day-to-day lives and be more aware of the consequences that happen from our words and actions....