Is Short Story of The Bath about Unclear Communication?

Illustration, credit to Short Story Award

The Bath, is another short story written by Raymond Carver, an American writer. The story was about a boy, named Scotty who would have birthday. The boy’s mother, Ann Weiss orders the cake for her boy birthday party from a bakery shop.

Unfortunately, the birthday boy got accident while walking to the school. Then, the story, actually start from here.

In the story, Carver (1989) draws the unclear communication among boy’s mother, boy’s father, baker, and health providers. Boy’s mother did not understand why a technician should take her son blood.

When back home to bath, boy’s father did not understand about the cake and price of 16 dollars. 

Even complicated, when boy’s mother thought the baker ‘s call was a hospital call about her son fate. She confused why hospital ask US$16? 

Both boy’s mother and father do not understand how far the meaning of what doctor said, as written by Carver (1989), Doctor said that “nothing to worry about” (page.6) and their son will be fine. 

Fine of what? While their son still not wake up since the accident. They are fear and feeling of helplessness with Scotty’s condition. 

I need to read twice before I could understand the flow of this short story, it is because the writer “asks” the readers to make own conclusion on each character. There is symbol of communications through telephone that difficult to what its mean is in the context of story for readers. But, overall, the story is quite interesting to read.

Reference

Carver, R. (1989). The Bath. In What We Talk about When We Talk about Love. New York: Vintage Contemporaries. Retrieved from file:///C:/Users/Tanza/Documents/Tanza-UnivPeople/Sem08-Jan2007/English1102/Unit-02/Story-TheBathRaymondCarver.pdf