raymond carver they re not your husband pdf to excel

She tells her husband and he says to her ' They're Not Your Husband'.Īfter she has lost nine pounds or so, the husband is back in the diner. He goads her onto a diet and when she begins to lose weight but looks haggard and feels week her co-workers express concern over her health. OK it takes either an idiot or a total uncaring brute to say something like this to his wife, perhaps particularly when she is the only one working in the family.

When he and the wife are going to bed, he basically tells her she needs to lose some weight and tells her to stand naked in front of the mirror. Not knowing who the man is, they make a number of really rude remarks about her body, concluding with a suggestion that they guess she can still attract men because 'some like them fat'. In They’re Not Your Husband by Raymond Carver we have the theme of embarrassment, appearance, acceptance, control, obsession, selfishness and insecurity. Salesman demonstrates his wares to the narrator on the strength of a free. They are us As Carver himself said of the stories of a friend and fellow. Of seeing the world but not just new Dr Johnson's definition of wit. (1994) 'Negative Pastoral the Art of Raymond Carver's. Two men come in and scrutinize his wife from behind as she bends over.įull text document (pdf). The husband is sitting at the counter, hoping to get a free meal.

The wife works as a waitress in a diner.īasically that means a restaurant with a counter, a simple place. The husband in the story has to be a nightmare figure for every married woman concerned her charms have faded. 'They're Not Your Husband' will make a lot of people cringe at the brutal seemingly valueless lives depicted in the story. It does not mean I do not appreciate his genius and I will keep reading his stories.

If this shows a lack of artistic detachment on my part or a lack of sympathy for the people in most of his stories, then so be it. I know it is not a good reading habit to judge stories and novels on how the people in the stories relate to those in your world but I am a bit turned off by the prevalence of alcoholics, drug users, wife abusers and just seemingly brutally ignorant people in his stories. (By a cosmic coincidence it was Carver's last story.) I am put off a bit by the people in Carver's stories. I was fully convinced of his brilliance when I read his story on the last day in the life of Anton Chekhov. I recognize he has a tremendous talent and can do wonders with a small amount of material. I have read and posted on five of his stories. Raymond Carver (1938 to 1988, Oregon, USA) is on a lot of top ten short story writer of all times lists.

Raymond carver they re not your husband pdf to excel