A Study Guide for Raymond Carver's "A Small, Good Thing"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Raymond Carver's "A Small, Good Thing," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535817226

Book preview

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A Small, Good Thing

Raymond Carver

1983

Introduction

A Small, Good Thing, an award-winning story by American short story writer and poet, Raymond Carver, was published in Carver's third major collection of stories, Cathedral, in 1983. In his first two collections, Carver had established himself as a new and compelling voice in American literature and a master of the short story form. In Cathedral, he took his craft to new levels of insight into the human condition. A Small, Good Thing is generally regarded as one of Carver's finest stories, in which he goes beyond the spare narratives and unrelieved bleakness of some of his earlier work. The story is about Scotty, an eight-year-old boy who dies three days after being hit by a car as he walks to school. In language that is simple on the surface but reveals a host of telling details, Carver depicts the grief of the parents and their quarrel and final reconciliation with a baker who was baking a birthday cake for Scotty. Although tragic and disturbing, A Small, Good Thing conveys a message of forgiveness, kindness, and the healing power of human community.

Author Biography

Raymond Carver was born on May 25, 1938, in Clatskanie, Oregon, the son of Clevie Raymond, a laborer, and Ella Beatrice Raymond, a homemaker. In 1941, the family moved to Yakima, Washington.

Carver's father was a great storyteller and also read aloud to his son. Carver later attributed his desire to become a writer to his father. During adolescence Carver enjoyed fishing, hunting, and baseball, but his main goal was to write. He graduated from Yakima High School in 1956 and the following year married Maryann Burk, who was sixteen years old. By 1958, they had a daughter and a son and had moved to Paradise, California, where Carver entered Chico State College. At Chico, Carver studied under