Alienation In Raymond Carver’s Short Fictions

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr.(May25,1938–August2,1988) is a major writer ofthe late20th century and part of the major force in the revitalization of the Americanshort fiction in the1980s. Being noted as the most influential American short storywriter after Hemingway by some critics, Carver has a distinctive writing stylecharacterized by terse language, great usage of short simple sentences, dialogue and alarge amount of ellipsis and omission. Many characters in his short stories, likehimself, suffered from unhappy marriage, unemployment and alcoholism. Lives ofthese characters tend to reflect a similar theme-Alienation. While most critics paidgreat attention to Carver’s unique narration, few have noticed the common theme ofthese stories.Alienation is not a new concept either in literature or in philosophy. It hasdifferent implications at different times and under different interpretations. This thesisattempts to prove that alienation is an important theme in many short stories writtenby Carver, with Erich Fromm’s interpretation and extension of Marx’s alienationtheory as the theoretical background.The author of this thesis chose six stories written by Carver for analysis. Thesestories reflected alienation theme and represent three different patterns of alienation.“Careful” and “Preservation” reflected people’s alienation from themselves and theirexistences;“Boxes” and “What do you do in San Francisco?” reflected man’salienation from others;“The Compartment” and “The Cabin” reflected the connectionbetween men and the external environment around them.