Relationships In My Father's Life By Raymond Carver

the struggles of fathers and sons because of slavery. This conflict, seen in In My Father’s

The Short Story “My Father’s Life,” by Raymond Carver illustrates the difficult task of a son trying to find his own sense of identity and individualism while watching his father’s life unravel. Carver explores the relationships of his parents and his own struggle with sharing the same name with his father and the similarities and differences between them.

Many people have ways of influencing others. Most people use words to affect other people. An amount of individuals would utilize their gift of persuasion to convince others of their causes or maybe arguments, while some use authority to force people to do as they are told. These several differences can apply to fathers as well. Not all fathers are similar when it comes to educating their children. Many are gentle, while some are more dominant. Randy T Caldwell, a somewhat young spirited middle aged man. Dark skinned with black Gucci frames to accommodate his big brown eyes. Standing 5’11, board shoulders, happy, loving, man of

In this essay I will be comparing “She,” by Matthew Brooks Treacy and the relationship with his mother to my relationship with my father, and the lessons taught through experiences that occurred. My father taught the concept of moral obligation, in a similar fashion to Traecy’s mother teaching him to use his hands, through errands, that influenced my decision to make ethical decisions throughout my life.

Raymond Carvers My Fathers Life tells the story of his father’s life while also elucidating the problems that his father had, that led to an unhappy life as he grew older. Raymond Carvers father was a drinker, cheater, and couldn’t stay in one place for too long. These characteristics drove his father to a low point in his life and he wasn't somebody for Raymond to look up to. Throughout the story he describes his father’s life, pointing out most of the events that went wrong, and how his father moved constantly for new work. He describes the rough times, with a few moments of happiness. Raymond later realizes that growing up watching his father live that terrible lifestyle was showing up in him as an adult. He delivers this personal narrative in a way that shows what you shouldn't do as a father and husband. Clevie Raymond Carver was never fit to be an father and his actions

One event that defined a part of my life that involved literacy was when I had to write a

Growing up we all had expectations of who we should be imposed upon us by our parents. Whether or not we achieved those expectations upon reaching adulthood isn't really the final outcome. There is a greater lesson learned regardless of how we benefited from the imposition. And that realization is what truly shapes our final character. Raymond Carver entertains this topic in his poem, "Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-second Year." In this poem Carver provides us with a beautifully touching slice of life that is not only flawless in writing and technique, but that connects and emotionally evokes feelings that are universal in all

Love is undoubtedly one of the most frequently explored subjects in the literary world. Whether the focus is a confession of love, criticism of love, tale of love, or simply a tale about what love is, such literary pieces force readers to question the true meaning and value of love. Raymond Carver accomplishes this in his short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” As the unadorned setting and the personality of each character unfold, the reader realizes that Carver is making a grave comment on the existence of love. Carver utilizes strong contrast, imagery, and diction to ultimately suggest that love cannot be defined concretely and therefore cannot be defined in words, and because of this, it is better off unexplored.

Although I grew up in a family that was filled with love and happiness there were also heartache and pain. That is why I am able to connect with the story Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin with regarding the two brothers (which is myself and my sister) and the different paths they each took. The younger brother who decided to go off and make decisions on his own than that of his older brother. The older brother who went the total opposite and but tries to encourage his younger brother to make better choices. It wasn’t till the end of the story when the older brother began to understand more and more about his brother. This story compares to my sister and I with myself attempting to guide her in right path. We both grew up in a single parent household

Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He has written many novels relating to violent and post-apocalyptic genres. McCarthy has won multiple awards for his novels such as the U.S National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award for the novel All the Pretty Horse. His novel No Country for Old Men also won four Academy Awards. In addition to that, The Road, also won the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. The Road is a story about a little boy and his father who journeys through post-apocalyptic America. Many have named this novel an american classic due to one of many reasons- the loving and personal relationship between the father and his son despite the fact that any traces of life is essentially dead.

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road tells the journey of a man and his son to seek refuge in the South. Just as the man and the boy escape their post-apocalyptic dystopia, my parents escaped their home country of Vietnam from Communist forces. My parents can be compared to the boy in the story because they began their journey at a young age. As young children they had to fully understand the severity of their situation and mature early in order to comprehend what was occurring around them. My mother, father, and the boy all encountered obstacles and had to overcome blank situations. Although my mother and father have two different stories, their stories can be juxtaposed to that of the boy’s and many similarities can be found.

The short-story “A Conversation with My Father”, by Grace Paley, combines several themes and the author uses the elements of abandonment, denial, irony, humor and foreshadowing, to bring this emotional story together. This story is mainly about the relationship between a parent and his child. The primary characters are a father, and his child. There is no mention of whether the child is his daughter or son. The tone of the story and the conversations made me believe that the old man has a daughter, and hence I will refer to the child as his daughter.

Thank you for everything you do for us. I know you don’t work at that job but you still help. You sacrafice your time and sleep to do what you do. Thank you for being part of the firemen and for making your lives safer every day.

Raymond Carver was born in 1938 and had an unstable childhood which led to his unstable adulthood. He followed his father to different cities looking for work, and the two of them worked together in a sawmill in Chester, California. Raymond’s parents were not positive role models in his childhood. In Carol Sklenicka’s Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life, Carver mentioned an occasion when his mother hit his father “between the eyes with a colander and knocked him out” in his essay “My Father’s Life,” (Sklenicka). Frequent events similar to this resulted in Carver never having the ability to experience what a family should look like, leading to Raymond himself acting in a similar way. William A. Rothenberg and Andrea M. Hussong of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Laurie Chassin of Arizona State University found “moderate levels of family conflict are perceived by adolescents at age 10, with moderate linear decreases in family conflict over time. Adolescents in families where a parent had a substance use diagnosis reported higher levels of conflict than their peers at age 10, and this difference remained stable over time” (Rothenberg et al.). Since Raymond was still young during these events, he grew up surrounded by these conflicts resulting in a normalization of them. Not long after starting this job he

"Never forget the past…because it may haunt you forever. Regret all the bad things…cherish the good things. Look ahead always…but don't let the bad things from the past get in your mind." As a young child, there were so many incidents in my life that made me become the person I am today. There were rough times as well as good times. If I were to tell you all of them, I would remember half of them. I think some of my incidents really had some impact, and some were just simple ways of life. To tell you the truth, the incident that had the most impact on me has to be when my real father left me at the age of three. I never knew my father. I mean being a baby, you really have no experience or recognition of somebody else.