When I first read "Popular Mechanics," by Raymond Carver, I was pretty intrigued.Although, I did not like the title for this story what so ever. I did think it was typical, and had repeated the same story line in many stories and dramas on TV, but it was still interesting. I had to read it twice to make sure I wasnt missing anything. Just because it was short, doesn't mean it wasn't saying much. I began to feel intensity build up and was really hoping something was not going to happen as I thought it was. The ending was extremely creepy, but very well played out. In class we asked ourselves if they were fighting over a picture the entire time, or if it was a real baby. And I kept saying to myself, why don't they ever turn the lights on?
The story had many symbolic traits, and as well as a pretty clear tone. I felt as if I was right there in the argument. I really feel the author was trying to portray, how anger and selfishness gets the best of us. These two characters showed us just that. By the evidence in the text, I would say that there was a real baby involved. I think the trick is when to switch from them holding a picture, as to when the mom picks up the actual baby. Most of the heated fight took place in the kitchen, which was well played, as it made more sense than placing it anywhere else. Do you guys really think it was a picture they where fighting over? And do you ever stop and wonder what type of people these authors are to be able to sit and think about stuff like this....ripping apart babies? Haha, just saying.
For me it also reminded me a lot of tv shows. I don't think that it was a picture they were fighting over. I believe it was a real baby due to the fact that carver says "...he gripped the screaming baby under and arm near the shoulder." and also “she caught the baby around the wrist and leaned back." They couldn’t fight over the picture unless the baby was cut out from the surrounding area. There is too much deal about the baby for me to believe that it is only a picture
ReplyDeleteI can't say for sure if it was a picture or a baby they were fighting over, it was very ambiguous but the evidence pointed mainly toward it being a baby and not the picture.
ReplyDeleteWell the title of the story is a reference to the commonality of the situation. He purposely wrote this entire story to point out how often this occurs. And while Carver did not say the baby was torn apart it isn't that crazy of a notion. He could have easily been referring to the child being emotionally torn apart by the parents fighting, he could just be making that idea more real. Maybe I'm crazy but I think the author has nothing severely wrong with him for writing a story like this.
For me personally I thought there was a baby. The whole ending wouldn’t be as impactful if there wasn’t a real baby. And also when it’s written, "he gripped the screaming baby under and arm near the shoulder." There is a lot of detail, like Lauren said, that leads you to believe that there is a baby. But I do get how some would think that it was a picture because she did grab the picture and then poof she had a baby instead of a picture. But like I said I thought there was a baby and I still think there was a baby. To answer your other question about who are these writes that write about such horrible things, I think they are trying to write things to help open our eyes to these larger problems. We all know how divorce can affect children in some very extreme ways. And I think that’s what carver was trying to get at. But in order to really grab our attention he had to take it to an extreme level where the baby actually dies.
ReplyDeleteThe stuff we all talked about in class really blew me away. Here was this short story we all read together, and as we started to discuss it the 'inner workings' started to come to light. There were all these different meanings that just our little group of individuals came up with, and some of them kind of had me shocked because they had not occurred to me in the slightest until someone else pointed it out.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was really interesting how such a short story could have so many different possibilities to it. There were so many varying angles one could approach the story from, and there are probably an infinite amount of perceptions one could hold about it.
I think the reason it surprised me so much was that it was so short yet had these different hidden things that could be read into.
I agreed to everything you said. It did seem like it was another one of those tv shows, but it does created the sense of intensity. I also pondered on why did both of the main characters didn't even bother to turn the lights on, I didn't even think that Carver is relating that to the theme of the story. It is very clever of him to use symbolism throughout the story, but that made me a little confused. At least our class discussion made this short story very clear for me.
ReplyDeleteIt just came up to me about maybe why Raymond Carver didn't make it clear enough when they switched from the pic to the real baby. But i think he didn't make it clear to point out how its a similar process that we may go through. Like when we start with a small problem (like taking just a picture) that it will lead to a bigger problem (dealing with a live baby) without us being aware of how big it has become and we don't realize it until we see the consequences and it's too late. To answer your question about why I would think the author went to the extreme of including a baby getting ripped apart and killed. I think he was just trying to really emphasize his point that a conflict can become really serious even if it starts small.
ReplyDeleteVery true, those are all real good points.
ReplyDeleteI agreed to everything you said. I definitely had no idea why the title of the story was Popular Mechanics. Until we discussed the story in class, I totally wasn’t expecting that. He wrote the story with the sole purpose to tell that this happens all over the world in different societies and backgrounds. That’s why there isn’t much detail about the characters. So it remains open to interpretation for the reader.
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