Raymond Carver's 'Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?'

Raymond Carver was born on May 25, 1938 in Clatskaine, Oregon. In 1957, a year after graduating from high school, Carver married his high school sweetheart, Maryann Burk. Carver worked as a janitor, gas-station attendant, and a delivery man to support his family. Carver became seriously interested in writing when he took a creative writing course in 1958 at the University of California ("Raymond Carver | American Author"). His short stories began being published in magazines during his studies at Humbolt State University. Carver’s first successful story was published in 1967 with the title “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?”. Carver began writing full time after losing his job as a textbook editor in 1970 ("Raymond Carver | American Author"). Carver had problems with alcoholism that led him to be hospitalized several times throughout the 1970s.

The man, nor his wife, is described physically. The man is a rather dull person who just goes through a routine every day. His wife seems to be slightly livelier, but she is also naïve to the status of her marriage, which seems to be failing. Robert is described physically, in detail. Robert is a blind man in his late 40s, he is balding, heavy-set, with stooped shoulders, and he is wearing brown clothes with a sports coat and a tie. Although he is blind, he doesn’t wear sunglasses or use a cane, this surprises the man. The wife met Robert in Seattle about 10 years before the story took place. The wife took a job reading to Robert during the summer. After the wife had left Seattle, Robert hired another woman to read to him. This woman was named Beulah, whom he later married. Beulah and Robert were married for eight years before Beulah died of cancer. The story is set in New York in the 1960s. The story is told from a first person point of view and it is told in a sequential order as the night goes