A Research Of The Dilemma Of Communication In Raymond Carver's Short Stories

Raymond Carver is one of the most representative short storytellers in the United States of the time.Throughout Carver's literary creations,he writes about the theme of"dilemma of communication" in short stories published in different periods.Dialogue among characters in his literature works is often clueless.They hear nothing or unwill to listen to each other in any way,the only communication is often interrupted again by silence and suspicion.His novels profoundly reveal the human's spiritual crisis in modern Western society.The purpose of this paper is to explore the different forms of the dilemma of communication between individual and society,family and self through close reading,combined with the study of writer's life,social and cultural context.This paper is divided into five parts.The first part is the introduction.Introduce the experience of Carver,and the situation of his literature works;then systematically review and summarize the relevant research results at home and abroad,specifically analyze the domestic research on Carver,and point out the problems and shortcomings in domestic research.On this basis,the writer proposed a new idea.The second part mainly discusses the manifestations of the dilemma of communication from the social level.By creating different characters such as "fat man" in Fat,bakers in Bathing,the old man and women in the Train,Carver explores the inner world of ordinary people and shows the complex emotional and psychological world when individuals communicate with each other.Carver equates"self ' with a "person who imagines it",gives the "other" a powerful meaning,makes people indulge in it,makes it hard to distinguish between imagination and reality,and thus alienates with friends;he writes " dissimilation " among people,make the people become isolated individuals without a sense of security.In this way,loneliness and desperation make the character loses the desire to communicate.At the same time he describes the crisis of trust among people,revealing the indifferent interpersonal relationships in modern society make communication extremely difficult.The third part discusses the manifestations of the dilemma of communication from the family level.Carver focuses on the interior of family and creates three representative works,Bike,Muscle,Cigarette,Dear,Why is this?and Feather.Then,from the aspects of "confusion of identity","suspicion" and "silence",he shows the difficult realization of communication,and the performance of father and son,mother and son,the emotional crisis between husband and wife.The personal crisis of self-identity prevents him or her from defining their role within the family and therefore prevents normal communication within the family.The fourth part discusses the manifestations of the dilemma of communication from the individual level.In the pursuit of "rationality",people are gradually"materialized" and lose their ability to express themselves.In combination with the short story Jerry,Molly and Sam,Why do not you dance,Serious conversation.Large Church,Carver demonstrated his own escape and compromise in the real world.At the same time,in the discussion of self-dilemma,Carver has intended to arrange the characters for self-reflection and redemption,more profoundly demonstrated the dilemma of individual and self communication.The fifth part is the conclusion.The dilemma of communication is the deep theme that runs through the short stories of Carver.By summarizing the main points in the article,this paper points out that the dilemma of communication is not limited to the era of Carver,but still has reference for the modern society.