Split Stories

Okay, I know we’re supposed to be paying attention to the things going on around us and posting about those, but I just read a story that really made me think about what we’ve been talking about in this course, so I’m going to write about that. Earlier this month I read a story within Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” titled The Bath. After really enjoying his type of stories, I ordered another collection. Upon reading this second collection today, I came upon a story titled A Small, Good Thing. The first five or six pages of this story read exactly the same as The Bath. For a bit, I was concerned that the two collection had some sort of overlap. However, as I continued to read, I noticed various changes within the story begin to take form.

I suppose at this point I should summarize the story. A young boy is hit by a car on his birthday. He falls into a deep coma, and the rest of the story is that of his parents, dealing with the aftermath and uncertainty. In the first version I read, the ending is ambiguous, leaving the reader wondering if the phone call the mother is receiving is from the hospital, or from a disgruntled baker. The reader has the choice of assuming the worst or hoping for the best. However, this ambiguity is missing from the second version of the story. The boy awakens, screams for a short while, and dies. This version ends, rather, with the boy’s parents being comforted by a baker in the night.

After reading the two stories I am left wondering whether I read one story told two different ways, or two stories, each with their own motivations and purposes, united by some common traits but ultimately different. I’m still not sure which it is, but I like the idea that Carver was able to create this world, and return to it later on in order to tell a completely different story with the same exact setup.