Short Story Everything Stuck To Him By Raymond Carver

The truest things are best said simply. In the short story “Everything Stuck to Him”, Raymond Carver generates a neologistic view of a frame story. In the passage, a father is telling his daughter a story about a much simpler time when she was just an infant. Raymond Carver’s minimalist style, use of symbols, and method of characterization, all enhance the quality of his frame story. Carver is a minimalist writer, which means his sentences are devoid of elaborate details, explanations, or descriptive passages. His style enhances the story because even though he uses simple words, everything he says is significant, and there are never any words put to waste. The following quote is an example of the author’s minimalistic style: “...he stays by the window, remembering. They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come...” This

Indirect characterization is when an author shows the reader what a character is like through the character’s actions and reactions. The husband and wife in the frame story are depicted as very naive and immature children. Carver even refers to them as the boy and the girl. “They were kids themselves, but they were crazy in love… The boy and girl, husband and wife, father and mother…” The family lives under a dentist’s office, and the story references what seems a past issue where the naive couple gets caught using the dentist’s letterhead. There are multiple scenarios within the frame story that show the reader that the young couple were not mature enough to know how to keep their family going. The boy is impatient and still feels the urge to be young and free. However, the stubbornness of the girl convinces him that his responsibility is his family and nothing else. The indirect characterization in this story shows a lot about what each character’s personalities are, and helps the reader completely understand the character’s