The stories of Raymond Carver: the menace of perpetual uncertainty

The tracing of changes in Raymond Carver's short story style is one of the most persistent topics of Carver criticism. Unfortunately, by focusing on change, critics have overlooked one of the most consistent aspects of Carver's short stories, their sense of menace. In Fires, Carver explains: "I like it when there is some sense of menace in short stories. . . . There has to be tension, a sense that something is imminent. . ." (17). William Stull notes that one of Carver's early stories, "Pastoral" (1963), is shaped "as an 'iceberg,' its marital conflict seven-eighths submerged" ("Raymond" 466).

Throughout his career, Carver achieved a sense of menace by leaving out, or by providing only clues to, crucial aspects of the story. Both character and reader sense that something dangerous or menacing is "imminent" or "submerged," but both character and reader, unable to find the meaning of the given clues, must battle between readings of those clues. Menace develops as meaning itself becomes elusive. A second part of the method by which Carver achieves his unique sense of menace is his basing existential matters on the story's clues instead of on clearly stated facts.

In "What Is It?" the used-car salesman eyes Leo and "watches for sudden movement" (Will You Please 216), watches for clues, and this watching highlights both characters' uncertainty about what the other sees or believes. This state of menacing uncertainty is equally evident in "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" when the quiet conversation suddenly becomes much, much quieter. "'Just shut up for once in your life,' Mel said very quietly. 'Will you do me a favor and do that for a minute?'" (What We Talk About 146) These sentences seem out of place in a conversation investigating love, so Mel's relationship to Terri is made ambiguous just when he is attempting to clarify it. Here, the first sentence is a harsh command, but the next is a request for a favor in the form of a question. The incongruity of tone confuses, contradicts, and, therefore, menaces.

However, again, this sense that language is confusing rather than clarifying and that unanswerable but crucial questions are being asked does not simply impart menace within Carver's stories. In stories taken from throughout his career, Carver's menace affects the reader as he or she struggles with the language that seems to be stating something quite simple, but that is in reality hiding something, something important, and something that, once it seems clear, still isn't an answer.

Carver effects his particular brand of menace in the title story of his first collection, "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" In this story, the clues are made polysemous by subtle contradictions. Important dates are given as fact, as definite history, but then the dates are changed. Even a careful reader may not notice the changes or immediately realize their importance, but many readers sense that the main character's moment of realization is more than it first seems to be. It is exactly this vague sense of missing something that helps to give the reader a sense of menace.

An omniscient narrator introduces Ralph and Marian Wyman as a settled-in couple with two children, four and five years old. The narrator also gives a detailed history, including the fact that Ralph and Marian have "only a single injury to their marriage, and that was well in the past, two years ago this winter. It was something they had never talked about since" (228). At first, it seems that "all" that is at issue is whether or not Marian had "[a] go at it" (236) with a man named Mitchell Anderson, and the menace rises as the couple teases around the topic.

"Do you ever think about that party?" she asked, still looking at him.

He was stunned [because he is thinking about it] and shifted in the chair, and he said, "Which party? You mean the one two or three years ago?"

She nodded.

He waited, and when she offered no further comment, he said, "What about it? Now that you brought it up, what about it?" Then: "He kissed you, after all, that night, didn't he? I mean, I knew he did. He did try to kiss you, or didn't he? (229)

Still early in the conversation, the question of what is known or only suspected has become a major theme. Ralph wants to know more, because, even though they have never discussed the topic, Ralph is "willing to admit he thought about it more and more. Increasingly, ghastly images would be projected on his eyes, certain unthinkable particularities" (228). Needing to know for certain, Ralph presses the issue. After all, he says, "It was a long time ago, wasn't it? Three or four years ago. You can tell me now" (230). When Marian agrees that "Yes. . . . He did kiss me a few times," Ralph still doesn't know for certain. "You told me before he didn't. You said he only put his arm around you while he was driving. So which is it?" (230) But Ralph still does not get his answer; instead, the couple calls an uneasy and brief truce during which Marian states clearly that "really, nothing else happened" (231).