A Small, Good Thing

Raymond Carver, Short Cuts

A small, good thing is a short story about a couple’s experience in the tragic loss of their son, Scotty, in a hit and run accident. Scotty goes into a coma and his parents struggle to cope with the situation. Scotty later dies in hospital but his death leads to connections with other people in the lives of Scotty’s parents, Ann and Howard, as they try to comprehend the events in their once “perfect lives”. Raymond Carver uses Scotty, Ann, Howard and a baker to show that it is the tragedy in our lives which has the potential to connect us.

The baker was a character I found interesting because of how the perception of him changed over the course of the text. Carver first introduces the baker in the opening scene when the mother is ordering a cake for Scotty’s birthday. The baker is focused solely on his work and only communicates the bare minimum to the mother in order to  get the critical information about the cake he will be baking. The mother decides she cannot make friends with him as he is too cold and noninteractive showing no emotion. Carver has portrayed the baker as someone who is unfriendly and someone who makes Scotty's mother uncomfortable. This contrasts to the later scene where Scotty’s parents confront the baker on his insensitive phone calls toward their son’s death. Here Carver shows a more human side to the baker. The baker apologizes profusely about his comments and offers the parents some of his food to comfort them in their time of loss. This is the first connection  between the baker and the parents, the connection involving food. The baker then shares some of his own suffering about how he has been been childless in his entire life and how he can only imagine the parent’s pain. He discusses his loneliness with spending most of his days and nights baking and how he doesn’t go to weddings or socialise with friends for he is only known as “The Baker”. Here we see the baker connecting with the parents on a deeply personal level. Carver has shown a change in the baker from someone impersonal to someone with empathy. This text made me think about why we connect over tragedies. We connect because we know how hard it is to cope with death and we want to help the people through. The baker realises he has been too focused on work and is missing the important connections. This death is a wake up call for him and gets him out of routine and makes him human.

I also liked the baker as a character because he reminded me that while some people may seem cold and not compassionate on first impression, they may actually be comforting once you know them better. This was shown in the baker as his whole life was working and he didn’t think about other people like Scotty’s mother. Once the baker realised the situation his attitude changed and we saw a nicer side of the baker. What was interesting to me was that the baker only became nice after the death when he could have been nice to the mother before Scotty died. The baker could have made connections and friendships without the need for death. This showed me I should always be open and friendly as you get nothing from being emotionless and unfriendly.

Tim Armstrong