English 1B
Instructor: Gregory Ramirez
The Wilting Flower
In his short story, “Popular Mechanics,” Raymond Carver poignantly portrays multiple social issues that have unfortunately become too common in today’s society. Perhaps drawing upon his own personal experience of divorce, the story opens with a father packing his suitcase while the mother of his child hurls insults at him. As the story unfolds, Carver introduces the primary social issue of the story: innocent children always bear the emotional and physical burden of the termination of their parents’ relationship. The author’s minimalistic style yields a story that unfolds much like dramatic scenes from a movie. Through careful use of language, along with the intentional employment of dialogue and irony, Carver avoids limiting the application of his message to a limited group; rather, the story communicates a timely and universal message to a diverse audience.
Carver’s distinct style becomes immediately evident in the first two paragraphs of the story; he weaves an ominous setting with a description of the scene outside the bedroom window with the scene inside where a man is packing a suitcase. The reader is presented the image of a dreary street as darkness is falling at the end of the day; the snow has begun to melt, and Carver even appeals to the reader’s sense of hearing with onomatopoeia, “Cars slushed by on the street outside…”(228). By being generic in his description of the scene, with details of time and place withheld, the universality of the plot is preserved. Since the story is narrated from a third-person, objective point-of-view, the reader watches the story unfold like an engaged spectator. A woman is yelling at the man as he packs, “Son of a bitch! I’m so glad you’re leaving! … You can’t even look me in the face, can you?” (228). By allowing the reader an inside perspective of the ensuing argumentative dialogue, the full emotion of the scene is on display. Another interesting characteristic is Carver’s disuse of quotation marks in the dialogue. Because of this, the back- and-forth exchange reads much like a play script, without the distraction of the traditional punctuation.
Carver then plays on the reader’s emotions with another distressing piece of the puzzle, “Then she noticed the baby’s picture on the bed and picked it up” (228). The woman seizes the portrait and storms into the living room. It is evident that this keepsake is important to the man, “Bring that back, he said” (228). The woman clearly does not believe the man has a right to the photograph, “Just get your things and get out, she said” (228). Now the reader is apprised of the fact that the couple has parented a child. By taking the picture of the baby from the father, the mother has introduced a new bone of contention to the domestic altercation.
At this moment, Carver shifts the plot from a man leaving his lover, to the major social tragedy: a heated in-home custody battle. This is exemplified by the following staccato dialogue, “I want the baby, he said” (228). The mother responds, “Are you crazy?” (228); undoubtedly the mother expects that she will keep the baby. The father continues, “No, but I want the baby. I’ll get someone to come by for his things” (228). With the baby crying, and the mother attempting to comfort him, the story evolves from a mere disagreement leading to the separation of only a couple to the collapse of an entire family unit.
Now the disintegration of the family turns physical; the man approaches the woman and backs her into a corner in the kitchen behind the stove, “…he came up. He reached across the stove and tightened his hands on the baby” (228). There now begins a shift in the nature of the struggle: initially an argument over who would take care of the child, the baby is becoming a pawn in the ongoing chess match between his parents. The scene progressively becomes more violent, “The baby was red-faced and screaming. In the scuffle they knocked down a flowerpot that hung behind the stove” (229). This image of escalating tension foreshadows the coming resolution.
This mounting pressure continues to build as the mother expresses her concern for the child’s well-being; she scolds the father for “hurting the baby” (229). When she feels the child slip from her grasp, the mother becomes more steadfast in her resolve to deny the father access to his son. The narrator observes, “She would have it, this baby. She grabbed for the baby’s other arm. She caught the baby around the wrist and leaned back” (229). This is the first, and only, time in the story that the baby is referred to as “it,” and, as such, morphs from a human to an object. Whether it is her love for the child, or a spirit of vindictiveness toward the father, the baby, quite literally, becomes the rope in a game of tug-of-war between his parents. Since neither party will allow the other to have the child, the story ends with this division, “In this manner, the issue was decided” (229).
A parallel can be drawn between the preceding events in “Popular Mechanics,” and I Kings 3:16-27. King Solomon is approached by two prostitutes who are fighting over a child. Both women claim to be the mother of the child.
The king said, “Get me a sword.” So they brought a sword before the king. The king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.” Then the woman whose child was the living one spoke to the king, for she was deeply stirred over her son and said, “Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means kill him.” But the other said, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him!” Then the king said, “Give the first woman the child, and by no means kill him. She is his mother” (The MacArthur Study Bible, I Kings 3.24-27).
In this passage, the mother, with concern for her child, was willing to give him up to spare his life. Unfortunately, the baby in Carver’s story was not so lucky; his parents, much like the second woman in the Scripture, cared more about not letting the other have the child than about the child himself.
The title, “Popular Mechanics,” is only the first of many instances of irony Carver employs in this work. This choice of title is telling of the dark, sarcastic tone of the story. As the story unfolds, and the baby becomes more and more objectified, the events clarify the author’s choice of title, as well as the imminent resolution. Just as the flowerpot has been permanently damaged in the struggle between the parents, the flower of her womb has been eternally marred by this experience. However, the reader does not receive the full effect of the title until the final lines of the story: with both parents straining his diminutive body with all of their weight, the baby’s life is left in the hands of the laws of physics. Although the story’s original title, “Mine,” would likely have been more straightforward, the designation “Popular Mechanics,” is more characteristic of Carver’s literary style.
Although the story is an easy read, it raises complex philosophical issues about modern life and the nature of love. In “Popular Mechanics,” Raymond Carver has penned a vivid portrayal of a timely message that must be taken to heart in our modern society: the truly vicious nature of the dissolution of a relationship, and the ramifications for the children left in its wake. In this piece, it is often more important to note the details which Carver excludes from the narrative than those he references; the missing subtleties are the foundation for a theme that encompasses all echelons of society. Carver does not, at any point, divulge the essence of the disagreement between the two parents, because the actual nature of the conflict is unimportant.
If Carver had made the initial dispute a part of the plot, it would have distracted from his main theme: to show the effect of parental separation on a child. While in most cases, a child may not literally meet the same end as the baby in Carver’s story, it is symbolic of the unseen emotional scars on children who find themselves ensnared in the clutches of two quarrelling parents.
Works Cited
Carver, Raymond. “Popular Mechanics.” Literature to Go. 2nd ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014. 228-29. Print.
The MacArthur Study Bible. John MacArthur, gen. ed. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2006.
Print. New American
Standard Bible.