Loneliness In The Lover By Raymond Carver
1
English 110
30 July 2014
Loneliness is an attitude
An attitude of loneliness is what the characters in Carver,
Shepard and Duras’s stories have chosen as a way of life.
Marguerite Duras chooses loneliness in her characters solely due to love, while Carver and Shepard’s characters choose an attitude of loneliness transpired from alcoholism and disappointment in love. Loneliness, an outcome of alcoholism can lead to lack of motivation to improve oneself.
The lack of motivation in Carver’s characters of “The
Gazebo” are so overcome with the need for alcohol the couple cannot even start the day without drinking. Although the characters try to show they want to change but the disappointment and hurt between the couple does not help …show more content…
make the situation better. Both lack the motivation to improve neither themselves nor the business. The loneliness of running the business themselves created an environment both wanted to just give up. In this part, the character claims he is proud of his achievement of being an alcoholic, “Well, the truth is we both hitting it pretty hard. Booze takes a lot time and effort if you’re going to do a good job with it.” (Carver, 26) They rather stay in this sad, alcoholic attitude both of them chose.
2
We see alcohol play a major role in almost all the stories
Carver wrote in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”.
The characters seem to enjoy drinking recreationally or as a consolation for all their sorrows. Some couples don’t feel the need to help the other from this addiction but they rather encourage the behavior, just as the character in “A Serious
Talk”. Vera helps the estranged husband have vodka and juice even though she knew alcohol makes the husband do and say abusive things to her. This drinking eventually led him to become violent when he became jealous of his wife’s phone call.
However, besides alcoholism, Carver also depicts a deeper problem in society.
Irving Howe, a critic from the New York Book Review in
“Stories of Our Loneliness”, states Carver is a gloomy person and behind the imitation of fake smiles of the rich American life, there are waste and destructiveness. This clearly shows how Carver’s characters are reflected by how he sees himself among the society he lives in. He understands how people are lonely even when things look normal in the outside but in turmoil within. To satisfy this emptiness within, the characters turn to alcohol. With the constant need for alcohol, the characters in “The Gazebo”, can only dream how they wish their life would be, rather than taking control of their lives to
3 improve themselves. The fake smiles of the American families with waste and destructives can be seen in characters in
Charter’s story “Tell the Women We’re Going”. Jerry and Bill have deep violent secrets that come out when alcohol is consumed.
Bill and Guy had to get away from their families to isolate themselves to drink, and later commit violent crime of rape and murder. Beyond the alcoholism, loneliness and abusive nature of the characters Carver wrote about, he understood that there is hope in finding that one true love. He emphasized this point in the last story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, when the old man in the hospital was so distraught that he could not see his wife as he lay in his bed. This shows Carver’s characters choose loneliness as way of live in the stories.
Likewise, Shepard’s characters choose loneliness as way of life in his stories as well.
Sam Shepard is a private person by nature. Shepard’s loneliness is a form of privacy he values. In other words,
Robert Brustein, from Contemporary Criticism, The Shepard Enigma, he believes “In short, Shepard is beginning to domesticate himself as a writer--ironically at the very moment when, as a movie actor, he is being catapulted into legend as the iconic lonely Westerner.”
This is supported by critic, Carol Rosen in
“Emotional Territory: An Interview with Sam Shepard”, from
4
Contemporary Literary Criticism, “Trying to maintain some degree of privacy, Shepard consistently turns down requests for interviews.” In short, loneliness is a part of Shepard’s life.
However, this is in contrast to the characters Shepard writes in his plays.
Shepard’s characters chose loneliness as an attitude by transpired from alcoholism and disappointment in love. Dodge, the patriarch of the family in Buried Child chooses loneliness because he could not cope with the shame and guilt that overtook him. His guilt and shame for killing the child his wife bore out of incest brought him to become emotionally distraught. He only could find solace with alcohol. Instead of working on the farm,
Dodge becomes solitary in remaining on the couch the whole day watching television. Tilden, son of Dodge also became isolated and lonely because of his internal struggle of losing his child.
Tilden chooses to come back to the parent’s home when he was in trouble. He was mentally lost and did not know where to go but back to his parent’s home. Shepard further explains his thoughts on loneliness with Carol Rosen in saying: “People who have the hunger for anything--the hunger for drugs, the hunger for sex-this hunger is a direct response to a profound sense of emptiness and aloneness, maybe, or disconnectedness.” Shepard clearly shows his characters know what they want out of life,
5 and if alcohol is the main motivation, nothing can stop them.
The motivation to get alcohol in the characters gets very intense that it leads to murder in “Buried Child”. The need for alcoholic and disappointment in love create an environment of isolation for the families in “Buried Child” and “The Curse of the Starving Class”.
The families live an isolated, solidary farm life in the
Mid-West of America. The families feel they do not have the resources to move forward for a better life and decide to live in the same place, being isolated and lonely. Loneliness was indefinite in both stories. With this isolation from society, alcohol becomes the norm for the characters in both stories.
Shepard further elaborates on his “emotional territory” which he chooses consciously because he is interested in effects to serve some purpose of emotional terrain in his plays. However, in one of his interviews, Shepard contradicts his loneliness by saying if he becomes lonely and isolated, he will lose his identity and his heritage.
Shepard feels it is vital for everyone to know where one comes from and how this affects the lineage after the person dies and the connection people have at present to everything from the past and to the future. Shepard’s character Dodge, an alcoholic depends on his family to take care of him but
6 contradicts his own statement to criticize his son, Tilden for coming back home to live with him. “You’re a grown man. You shouldn’t be needing your parents at your age.” (Shepard, 78).
Shepard quotes from his play “Buried Child” about the face reflected in the windshield in his interview with Carol Rosen.
The changing faces he sees in the windshield reflects all the faces of the ancestors before him and the myth about who he is and where he came from is a reflection of himself.
Shepard views his connection to his father as a reflection of himself and how important it is to know the past. The similarity between Carver and Shepard’s characters is in contrast with the characters in
Duras’s novel, “The Lover”.
Although Marguerite Duras did not emphasize alcohol as the main cause of loneliness in her semi-autobiographical novel, but she uses love as the main cause of loneliness in her story. The young girl in, “The Lover” had an attitude of loneliness she took even at fifteen. Her loneliness transpired from what she experienced with her mother’s sadness. The young girl admits she was sad because she was like her mother. She was isolated in the boarding school her mother sent her to and without proper adult guidance she fell in love with the older Chinese man. When the girl failed to find happiness within her family, she found happiness with the older Chinese man. Among the dysfunctional
7 characters in this story, Duras portrayed the young girl as the only one who had to sacrifice her dreams to save the family …show more content…
from loneliness and destitute. This secret life with her lover overwhelmed her as she began to understand the life lessons of love, hate, jealousy, hurt and sacrifice.
Based on Octavio Paz’s essay, “The Double Flame”, the five basic elements of love, is proven of the existence of all five elements of love in “The Lover”.
There was exclusivity between the young girl and the Chinese man as they were with each other almost at all opportunity. Despite the fact that both are from different ethnic backgrounds which forbid mixed relationships, they still had a sordid affair. This proved Paz’s second love element of obstacle. The domination of the young girl by the
Chinese man was evident when she allowed him to treat her like a whore, which proves love element three, domination and submission. (Duras, 42) Love element four which is freedom or fate is a poignant part of the relationship between the young girl and the Chinese man. This was evident when she met him on the day while crossing the river. (Duras, 10) The freedom to choose this lover as her first love to take her virginity was inevitable.(Duras, 38) The fifth love element of one true person that connects them both though the body and soul is significant part of their relationship. The Chinese man declared his love to
8 the young girl years later that he still loved her until death.
(Duras, 117) The young girl knew that she loved the Chinese man because she felt a certain kind of pain in her heart he made in her.(Duras, 48) With all the love between the two
main characters, each confessed that they were lonely. (Duras, 37)
The young girl was lonely because even though she had the power to control this love affair, she could not share her secret life with her family. She needed to become someone else other than what she truly wanted because of her obligation to her family.
Likewise, the Chinese man was lonely because he could not marry the young girl he truly loved. Along this journey of selfdiscovery, the young girl realizes she had strengths and weaknesses but both were one and the same.
The pleasures of love became a sense of power the young girl used on the Chinese man. Her ultimate strength was her sacrifice to let go of any future with the Chinese man as she left Saigon for France. She realized the love she had with the
Chinese man will be not be forgotten but became a source of inspiration for her writing. Loneliness for the character in
Duras’s novel showed there is something special and positive that we can learn from.
Likewise, I am an example of modern loneliness because I chose to move away from my family in Asia to find greener
9 pastures in the USA. Does this mean I am equally lonely just like the characters in Carver, Shepard or Duras’s stories? I don’t believe so. Loneliness is an attitude I take as a positive attribute. As Buddha says, “Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.”
10
WORKS CITED
Carver, Raymond, 6th Ed. What We Talk About When we Talk About
Love. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Print
Duras, Marguerite, The Lover. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997.
Print
Shepard, Sam, 4th Ed.
Seven Plays. New York: Dial Press Trade,
2005. Print
Howe, Irving. "Stories of Our Loneliness." The New York Times
Book Review (11 Sept. 1983): 1. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary
Criticism. Ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Vol. 36.
Detroit: Gale Research, 1986. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6
July 2014.
Brustein, Robert. "The Shepard Enigma." New Republic 194.3706
(27 Jan. 1986): 25-26. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism.
Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 169. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature
11
Resource Center. Web. 6 July 2014.
Shepard, Sam, and Carol Rosen. "Emotional Territory: An
Interview with Sam Shepard." Modern Drama 36.1 (Mar. 1993): 111. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec.
Vol. 169. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web.
6 July 2014.
English 110
30 July 2014
Loneliness is an attitude
An attitude of loneliness is what the characters in Carver,
Shepard and Duras’s stories have chosen as a way of life.
Marguerite Duras chooses loneliness in her characters solely due to love, while Carver and Shepard’s characters choose an attitude of loneliness transpired from alcoholism and disappointment in love. Loneliness, an outcome of alcoholism can lead to lack of motivation to improve oneself.
The lack of motivation in Carver’s characters of “The
Gazebo” are so overcome with the need for alcohol the couple cannot even start the day without drinking. Although the characters try to show they want to change but the disappointment and hurt between the couple does not help …show more content…
make the situation better. Both lack the motivation to improve neither themselves nor the business. The loneliness of running the business themselves created an environment both wanted to just give up. In this part, the character claims he is proud of his achievement of being an alcoholic, “Well, the truth is we both hitting it pretty hard. Booze takes a lot time and effort if you’re going to do a good job with it.” (Carver, 26) They rather stay in this sad, alcoholic attitude both of them chose.
2
We see alcohol play a major role in almost all the stories
Carver wrote in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”.
The characters seem to enjoy drinking recreationally or as a consolation for all their sorrows. Some couples don’t feel the need to help the other from this addiction but they rather encourage the behavior, just as the character in “A Serious
Talk”. Vera helps the estranged husband have vodka and juice even though she knew alcohol makes the husband do and say abusive things to her. This drinking eventually led him to become violent when he became jealous of his wife’s phone call.
However, besides alcoholism, Carver also depicts a deeper problem in society.
Irving Howe, a critic from the New York Book Review in
“Stories of Our Loneliness”, states Carver is a gloomy person and behind the imitation of fake smiles of the rich American life, there are waste and destructiveness. This clearly shows how Carver’s characters are reflected by how he sees himself among the society he lives in. He understands how people are lonely even when things look normal in the outside but in turmoil within. To satisfy this emptiness within, the characters turn to alcohol. With the constant need for alcohol, the characters in “The Gazebo”, can only dream how they wish their life would be, rather than taking control of their lives to
3 improve themselves. The fake smiles of the American families with waste and destructives can be seen in characters in
Charter’s story “Tell the Women We’re Going”. Jerry and Bill have deep violent secrets that come out when alcohol is consumed.
Bill and Guy had to get away from their families to isolate themselves to drink, and later commit violent crime of rape and murder. Beyond the alcoholism, loneliness and abusive nature of the characters Carver wrote about, he understood that there is hope in finding that one true love. He emphasized this point in the last story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, when the old man in the hospital was so distraught that he could not see his wife as he lay in his bed. This shows Carver’s characters choose loneliness as way of live in the stories.
Likewise, Shepard’s characters choose loneliness as way of life in his stories as well.
Sam Shepard is a private person by nature. Shepard’s loneliness is a form of privacy he values. In other words,
Robert Brustein, from Contemporary Criticism, The Shepard Enigma, he believes “In short, Shepard is beginning to domesticate himself as a writer--ironically at the very moment when, as a movie actor, he is being catapulted into legend as the iconic lonely Westerner.”
This is supported by critic, Carol Rosen in
“Emotional Territory: An Interview with Sam Shepard”, from
4
Contemporary Literary Criticism, “Trying to maintain some degree of privacy, Shepard consistently turns down requests for interviews.” In short, loneliness is a part of Shepard’s life.
However, this is in contrast to the characters Shepard writes in his plays.
Shepard’s characters chose loneliness as an attitude by transpired from alcoholism and disappointment in love. Dodge, the patriarch of the family in Buried Child chooses loneliness because he could not cope with the shame and guilt that overtook him. His guilt and shame for killing the child his wife bore out of incest brought him to become emotionally distraught. He only could find solace with alcohol. Instead of working on the farm,
Dodge becomes solitary in remaining on the couch the whole day watching television. Tilden, son of Dodge also became isolated and lonely because of his internal struggle of losing his child.
Tilden chooses to come back to the parent’s home when he was in trouble. He was mentally lost and did not know where to go but back to his parent’s home. Shepard further explains his thoughts on loneliness with Carol Rosen in saying: “People who have the hunger for anything--the hunger for drugs, the hunger for sex-this hunger is a direct response to a profound sense of emptiness and aloneness, maybe, or disconnectedness.” Shepard clearly shows his characters know what they want out of life,
5 and if alcohol is the main motivation, nothing can stop them.
The motivation to get alcohol in the characters gets very intense that it leads to murder in “Buried Child”. The need for alcoholic and disappointment in love create an environment of isolation for the families in “Buried Child” and “The Curse of the Starving Class”.
The families live an isolated, solidary farm life in the
Mid-West of America. The families feel they do not have the resources to move forward for a better life and decide to live in the same place, being isolated and lonely. Loneliness was indefinite in both stories. With this isolation from society, alcohol becomes the norm for the characters in both stories.
Shepard further elaborates on his “emotional territory” which he chooses consciously because he is interested in effects to serve some purpose of emotional terrain in his plays. However, in one of his interviews, Shepard contradicts his loneliness by saying if he becomes lonely and isolated, he will lose his identity and his heritage.
Shepard feels it is vital for everyone to know where one comes from and how this affects the lineage after the person dies and the connection people have at present to everything from the past and to the future. Shepard’s character Dodge, an alcoholic depends on his family to take care of him but
6 contradicts his own statement to criticize his son, Tilden for coming back home to live with him. “You’re a grown man. You shouldn’t be needing your parents at your age.” (Shepard, 78).
Shepard quotes from his play “Buried Child” about the face reflected in the windshield in his interview with Carol Rosen.
The changing faces he sees in the windshield reflects all the faces of the ancestors before him and the myth about who he is and where he came from is a reflection of himself.
Shepard views his connection to his father as a reflection of himself and how important it is to know the past. The similarity between Carver and Shepard’s characters is in contrast with the characters in
Duras’s novel, “The Lover”.
Although Marguerite Duras did not emphasize alcohol as the main cause of loneliness in her semi-autobiographical novel, but she uses love as the main cause of loneliness in her story. The young girl in, “The Lover” had an attitude of loneliness she took even at fifteen. Her loneliness transpired from what she experienced with her mother’s sadness. The young girl admits she was sad because she was like her mother. She was isolated in the boarding school her mother sent her to and without proper adult guidance she fell in love with the older Chinese man. When the girl failed to find happiness within her family, she found happiness with the older Chinese man. Among the dysfunctional
7 characters in this story, Duras portrayed the young girl as the only one who had to sacrifice her dreams to save the family …show more content…
from loneliness and destitute. This secret life with her lover overwhelmed her as she began to understand the life lessons of love, hate, jealousy, hurt and sacrifice.
Based on Octavio Paz’s essay, “The Double Flame”, the five basic elements of love, is proven of the existence of all five elements of love in “The Lover”.
There was exclusivity between the young girl and the Chinese man as they were with each other almost at all opportunity. Despite the fact that both are from different ethnic backgrounds which forbid mixed relationships, they still had a sordid affair. This proved Paz’s second love element of obstacle. The domination of the young girl by the
Chinese man was evident when she allowed him to treat her like a whore, which proves love element three, domination and submission. (Duras, 42) Love element four which is freedom or fate is a poignant part of the relationship between the young girl and the Chinese man. This was evident when she met him on the day while crossing the river. (Duras, 10) The freedom to choose this lover as her first love to take her virginity was inevitable.(Duras, 38) The fifth love element of one true person that connects them both though the body and soul is significant part of their relationship. The Chinese man declared his love to
8 the young girl years later that he still loved her until death.
(Duras, 117) The young girl knew that she loved the Chinese man because she felt a certain kind of pain in her heart he made in her.(Duras, 48) With all the love between the two
main characters, each confessed that they were lonely. (Duras, 37)
The young girl was lonely because even though she had the power to control this love affair, she could not share her secret life with her family. She needed to become someone else other than what she truly wanted because of her obligation to her family.
Likewise, the Chinese man was lonely because he could not marry the young girl he truly loved. Along this journey of selfdiscovery, the young girl realizes she had strengths and weaknesses but both were one and the same.
The pleasures of love became a sense of power the young girl used on the Chinese man. Her ultimate strength was her sacrifice to let go of any future with the Chinese man as she left Saigon for France. She realized the love she had with the
Chinese man will be not be forgotten but became a source of inspiration for her writing. Loneliness for the character in
Duras’s novel showed there is something special and positive that we can learn from.
Likewise, I am an example of modern loneliness because I chose to move away from my family in Asia to find greener
9 pastures in the USA. Does this mean I am equally lonely just like the characters in Carver, Shepard or Duras’s stories? I don’t believe so. Loneliness is an attitude I take as a positive attribute. As Buddha says, “Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.”
10
WORKS CITED
Carver, Raymond, 6th Ed. What We Talk About When we Talk About
Love. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Print
Duras, Marguerite, The Lover. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997.
Shepard, Sam, 4th Ed.
Seven Plays. New York: Dial Press Trade,
2005. Print
Howe, Irving. "Stories of Our Loneliness." The New York Times
Book Review (11 Sept. 1983): 1. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary
Criticism. Ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Vol. 36.
Detroit: Gale Research, 1986. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6
July 2014.
Brustein, Robert. "The Shepard Enigma." New Republic 194.3706
(27 Jan. 1986): 25-26. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism.
Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 169. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature
11
Resource Center. Web. 6 July 2014.
Shepard, Sam, and Carol Rosen. "Emotional Territory: An
Interview with Sam Shepard." Modern Drama 36.1 (Mar. 1993): 111. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec.
Vol. 169. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web.
6 July 2014.