Sunday, February 6, 2011

Culture Ideology-Carver

“When are you getting married?” This is a question that many people face once they reach a certain age. It is almost as if society believes that without marriage one will inevitably become an old lady with a dozen cats or a grumpy old man that scares children for fun. So to avoid this people get married. It’s a cultural ideology that marriage is needed to fill a void or feeling off emptiness in an individual life or sustain a long lasting companionship. Without the structure of marriage one is life feeling empty, depressed and lonely. Raymond Carver explores this belief in his short stories The Beginners and Why Don't you Dance.

In The Beginners Terri described her life with her first husband. Its stated that “Terri said the man she lived with before she lived with Herb loved her so much he tried to kill her...’He dragged me around the living room by my ankles, all the while saying, ‘I love you, don’t you see? I love you, you bitch,” (The Beginners). After such a horrific experience it is surprising that that Terri would once again marry. I believe that Terri convinced herself that Carl loved her in their marriage so that she would have the courage to marry again and fill that void that leaving Carl caused.

As human beings we need companionship and it is strongly believed that marriage offers a stable companionship. Terri may not want the physical pain that her marriage to Carl gave her, but she needed to fulfill that emotional satisfaction that a marriage gave her. Unfortunately Carl had no one to fill the void that his divorce to Terri caused. He began to resent Terri for moving on with Herb. He became what society would define as “the grumpy scary old man.” Eventually the lost of the structure that marriage gave him led him to taking his own life. Terri was not the only one who had a bad first marriage; her husband Herb had a bad first marriage.

At the end of his last marriage Herb was very depressed. He had even contemplated suicide. Herb described his first wife as “A rotten bitch”. He stated that “Sometimes when I get drunk, like I am now, I think I’d like to go up there dressed like a beekeeper...and release a hive of bees in the house.” Luckily he never acts on these thoughts. One can rationalize that he did not act on these thoughts because he had Terri. Unlike Carl, Herb had someone to turn to after his first marriage ended. He was able to marry and regain that stability that society believes a marriage offers. He was able to avoid becoming hat “rotten old man”. Furthermore, Herb told a story about an old couple that almost died after a drunk driver crashed his car into their camper.

While in the hospital the old man became very depressed because he could not physically be around his wife. “He missed her something fierce. He just longed for her company, that old man did…He was out of his casts and bandages now, but he was still extremely lonely.” (The Beginner). This old man was in a marriage for over twenty years. And he had only been apart from his wife twice. In the hospital he did not have his wife next to him. Marriage offers companionship and without his wife around, the old man missed that companionship and was left feeling alone and depressed.

Herb states “excuse me for saying this—but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other partner, would mourn for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough and all this, all of this love…it would just be memory,” (The Beginners). Herbs description is exactly what society expects. After the death of a partner, the wife or husband is expected to grieve for a short amount of time then later find a new partner. If one does not remarry society will look upon this individual as one who cannot move on from the past. It is encouraged for people who have lost a loved one to move on and find another love companion. In Why Don't you Dance by Raymond Carver we can see the images of a man moving on after the loss of a wife.

The old man in this story has put all his furniture on the lawn and he has arranged it to look as if they are still inside his house. When a young couple that stopped began to sample the belongings it becomes apparent that the man is desperate to move on. The fact that he is selling the most intimate things that was in his marriage, namely his bed, depicts his desperation to move on. In his last act of remembrance, the old man drinks and dances with the girl. I believe that in that moment he was reliving a sacred moment of his past. While dancing with the girl the old man says “’I hope you like your bed’…the girl closed and then opened her eyes. She pushed her face into the man's shoulder. She pulled the man closer. ’You must be desperate or something,’ she said” (Why Don't you Dance). The desperation that she speaks of his is desperation to let go of the past and find someone to fill the void that has been left due to the loss of his wife.

I strongly believe that the cultural ideology that Raymond Carver tried to depict in The Beginners and Why Don't you Dance is the idea that society believes marriage is something that is needed to have a lasting companionship and to fill a void or feeling of emptiness. As a society the majority of us see marriage as a sign that we are truly living life to the fullest and are at a point of satisfaction in our respective lives. The conclusions that I believe Carver comes to is that we all need companionship so there is nothing wrong with letting go of the past and moving on to the future, and we all need companionship because sometimes it is the only thing that keeps us from being too self destructive. Marriage offers this companionship but as sure as we are that the sun will rise in the morning and set at night, we can be sure that a marriage will come to an end, either by divorce, or death and when that happens it is fine to grieve then move on.

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