Alone with the World

By now, I am already quite familiarized with Carver`s style. He is probably the one author which I can identify myself with the most. His descriptions are not as elaborate as Bellow`s or Flaubert`s, nor is as outgoing and humoristic as Pynchon. Carver writes in the first and third person, unlike many of the authors I have just mentioned, and his characters usually have typical family or relationship problems (from the stories I have read). If reading his work were like looking at a picture, it would be a bit dark and empty, lacking vivacity. Even the cover of the book Cathedral fits these descriptions. There is a lonely man with a smoke in one hand and a drink in another. He is sitting alone at his table with only the television light illuminating the room. Although the TV is on, he is not looking at it. Instead, he seems to be thinking to himself, worrying about life. In the second story that I read, The Compartment, Carver has created a character very similar the one I have just described. He is alone though, in the compartment of a train, awaiting for an encounter with his son which hadn`t seen in several years. After a couple of hours of thinking on the train, he cowards out and decides not to go through with it. As soon as the train stops at the correct station, he stays in it and continues to the next. This is an example of what I assume is the typical Carver character, lonely and yet afraid of the world. A person who ends up getting lost in his or her own thoughts.