Dreary Mood In Popular Mechanics By Raymond Carver

In “Popular Mechanics”, Raymond Carver’s visual details help the readers adapt to the text. Carver’s vocabulary makes the mood understandable. Repetitive words makes it clear that people can hurt the ones they love. People hurt the ones they love as simple as having an argument leading to who takes the baby, just like the short story describes. The use of descriptive words help know the story has to do with divorce

As the ladies examine the house, while the men are other places, picking clothes and an apron up for Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Hale gains sympathy for her until finally she starts to take action. When they find the block of quilting that has stitching askew, she starts to fix it, perhaps to cover for Mrs. Wright?s distraught state of mind. While Mrs. Hale is finding sympathy for Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Peters offers a counterpoint that tries to justifies the men?s viewpoints and actions. Her comments to Mrs. Hale?s resentful musings on Mrs. Wright?s unhappy life and on the actions of men in regards to women in general all seem to be rote answers programmed into her by society and a desire not to cause any trouble. This all changes as soon as Mrs. Peters finds the bird.

To begin, the elements of tone and mood work together to reveal and support the message of survival and struggle. In the novel, Chiger uses descriptive details and her thoughts and attitudes toward the situation that she was placed into set the tone. She describes and explains the agony, hatred, and hopelessness she and others felt in the sewers, revealing her bitterness for the sewers and the Nazis. Chiger also uses mood to present her messages by creating different moods around different characters, making some optimistic and hopeful while making others pessimistic and morose. “This was a reflection of their personalities: my father was gregarious and personable; Weiss was gruff and miserable” (Chiger 107). This is relatable because some people may have disparate attitudes toward a negative situation, and each person may have a different demeanor or mood in response to it. Chiger conveys her themes of struggle and survival through tone and mood, and makes it somewhat relatable.

Hurst uses the mood of the story to convey the character's’ feelings and tells the audience, indirectly, how to feel emotionally

Finally, the reader is introduced to the character around whom the story is centered, the accursed murderess, Mrs. Wright. She is depicted to be a person of great life and vitality in her younger years, yet her life as Mrs. Wright is portrayed as one of grim sameness, maintaining a humorless daily grind, devoid of life as one regards it in a normal social sense. Although it is clear to the reader that Mrs. Wright is indeed the culprit, she is portrayed sympathetically because of that very lack of normalcy in her daily routine. Where she was once a girl of fun and laughter, it is clear that over the years she has been forced into a reclusive shell by a marriage to a man who has been singularly oppressive. It is equally clear that she finally was brought to her personal breaking point, dealing with her situation in a manner that was at once final and yet inconclusive, depending on the outcome of the legal investigation. It is notable that regardless of the outcome, Mrs. Wright had finally realized a state of peace within herself, a state which had been denied her for the duration of her relationship with the deceased.

Carver also emphasizes the contradictions within the characters themselves in the story, which illustrates the uncertainty of love, and how there is not a clearly defined approach to understanding it. Returning to the topic of Terri's previous marriage, Mel, her current husband, complains about his failure to understand how she could refer to that abusive relationship as love. However, later on when she corrects him while he is talking, he turns to her and asks her to "shut up" (Carver 767). Another important contradiction which takes place throughout the entire story, is how the four friends are discussing a subject which they all have had bad experiences with, since they have all been divorced and remarried. The contradictions throughout Carver's story symbolize how love can also contradict itself, and trying to understand love is impossible since so many particular cases can negate specific examples of love.

Carver begins with the story?s conflict, a relationship between a man and woman that has already gone extremely wrong. He does not need to tell the reader why or how this relationship came to this point. Carver relies on the reader to know the usual reasons that cause people to split up. Therefore, this gives readers the opportunity to attach their own explanation. As the title, ?Popular Mechanics? implies, it is the common workings of relationships that can be applied throughout this story.

In the story “Popular Mechanics”, Raymond Carver writes in a minimalistic manner causing the text to have more meaning than it seems. Carver uses symbolism, repetition, and metaphors to characterize the woman as distraught and agitated towards the man. This displays that the relationship between the man and the woman is very dysfunctional. Throughout the story, the woman seems more affected by the situation than the man. Also, the story ends on a devastating note, depicting the deep meaning behind their relationship and leading to a universal theme.

I selected the short story “Popular Mechanics” by Raymond Carver, because I thought it had to do with the magazine by the same name. I was surprised that it was something else entirely since the magazine Popular Mechanics is about technology and science. The story is about a husband packing to move out and they start to argue and physically fight who can have the baby. The husband and wife are literally tugging and pulling the baby and in the end might have seriously hurt it. I personally don’t like drama, since life is hard enough without it. This story is beautifully written from the beginning the author describes the scene and sets the mood of a miserable day. Carver describes how it is getting dark with snow also melting causing muddy water

In Short Cuts, by Raymond Carver, characters experience trials and problems in their lives, whether extreme such as in " A Small, Good Thing" and "Lemonade" or nominal such as in " Vitamins". They all seem to depict these struggles as uphill battles which the characters cannot and mostly do not overcome. The characters throughout Carver's "Short Cuts" struggle through their lives in private desperation, often to ultimately realize that they are bound to the truth of who they really are, which is shown in the story "Neighbors."

In Popular Mechanics the author, Raymond Carver, uses painstaking details, numerous symbols, and an unusual title to convey the universal theme that not all relationships end happily. Carver uses all these things to his advantage. He brings out the theme of this depressing, but truthful story. Many couples these days experience the same thing that this one in particular went through. "Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water." Carver starts off the story in this way. It is obvious that something bad is coming or has even already happened. The tone is grim from the very beginning and it also gives us an idea of what is to come. The weather outside is dark, "But it was getting dark on the inside too." This

In the beginning of “Little Things”, Carver created the scenery of outside to establish the dark side of the relationship. “Cars slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark but it was getting dark on the inside too”; Thus, foreshadowing the relationship on its last leg. As the man packed his belongings, the woman responded “I’m glad you’re leaving. I’m glad you’re leaving!”, Carver now expresses the relationship as being gloomy with no sign of contentment. Man, is portrayed as unhappy and leaving whereas the woman struggles to react without being attentive toward the man’s emotions. Foreshadowing is used to create the start point of this catastrophic ending with the man having empathy for the child and not the woman. Emotions emphasized the foreshadowing once the woman removed the picture of the child out the bedroom, Man now makes effort in having a conversation with the woman by the request that she “bring that back”. Emotions effected more than one point of view in “Little Things” due to the relationship involving two people and a child. Mutual affect had been brought to light with “Love and Basketball”, though Quincy was not a baby when the dispute between his parents and adultery started, his father took the time to address the personal situation with Quincy while he attended college by lying. Yet proof from both stories display the reality of emotions between parents and children in modern situation

Raymond Carver, author of “Popular Mechanics”, is a minimalist writer. Using the least amount of setting and character dynamics Carver makes the audience analyze the small details and actions that the people in the story do that would be seemingly nothing. The word ‘little’ at the beginning of the story is something that a lot of readers do not catch the first time reading this story, but it is a very important word that plays into the rest of the story. Carver uses small actions to grab the reader’s attention later in the story. Small actions, such as the woman picking up the baby’s picture and the knocked-down flower pot, take on larger significances, such as what the state of the relationship is, in “Popular Mechanics”.

Two more characters that suffer from struggle and hardship in the film are Mr and Mrs Carver. This is shown through the double up of dialogue about three quarters of the way through the film, when Mrs Carver is talking to Gilbert about how upset he?d made her, and Mr Carver could be heard in the background, trying to entertain their children. This technique allows the audience to experience

The author seems as if he is distancing himself from the story. The main reason I believe this is his lack of detail and overuse of simple sentences. It’s like he is telling a painful story he doesn’t want to tell. This analysis is further supported by Carver’s own history of physical abuse from his father (Hall, 2009, para. 6). Therefore, the author’s point of view aligns with morbid realism.