“HEAR THE HUMAN NOISE”: ANALYSING RAYMOND CARVER’S SHORT FICTION

ABSTRACT The short stories of Raymond Carver, an essentially underrated writer, chart a forgotten yet significant trajectory of American fiction. Understanding Carver is recognizing the elementary struggles of a lower middle class American family and the sheer determination to succeed in the creative world. His short stories are flashes of immediacy bringing home the ideas of penury, listlessness, failure of communication, unemployment and physical and emotional tragedy. Reflecting the harrowingly mundane or absurdly chaotic other side of the global superpower America, Carver's short fiction is often associated with the term “dirty realism”. It should be further noted that the features corresponding to this particular term such as literary minimalism, colloquialism of language, lack of psychological introspection in characters were denounced as superficial and non-literary by the critics. In a nation dominated by literary giants like Toni Morrison, Saul Bellow and others, Carver's unembellished prose portray a stark reference point to contemporary reality. Through my paper I would like to evaluate the dominant themes as well as the plethora of interesting characters which he creates in his short stories.