The Symbols In Popular Mechanics By Raymond Carver

The changing of the weather, the once joyful elements of a winter now gone. As the season comes to an end, a family’s relationship begins to wither away and die as they fight for a reason that is all too real in families today. This sets the scene for Raymond Carver’s short story, “Popular Mechanics.” “Popular Mechanics” opens with the husband of the family packing his suitcase in what appears to be the aftermath of a divorce. It then spirals into a domestic dispute between the wife and mother and father over the custody of their child. Because of Carver’s minimalist style of writing, the story is rather short and to the point. However, that doesn’t mean Carver cannot add symbolic elements throughout the story. Over the course of the …show more content…
The flower pot breaking was added into the story to show that the relationship is now literally and figuratively broken. The story states, “In the scuffle they knocked down a flowerpot that hung behind the stove” (Carver). It used to show the unity of the family and the life they were giving their child to grow. When the mother and father broke the pot, the family that was holding the plant together has been shattered into pieces. Now the plant inside the pot is now damaged, and if not placed in a new or fixed pot, the plant will soon wither away and die without the growing force it needs. Even though the pot can be fixed and glued together, it will never be the same pot because of its numerous cracks in it. The family will be forever cracked and broken and will never be truly fixed and will forever be cracked and …show more content…
Carver included the death of the child to symbolize the final nail in the coffin for the family. Any chance to glue the family back together has been eradicated. The family is left without the one thing that they had been fighting over and the one thing that has kept them together. It shows that the fight was meaningless and that there was no true winner in the end. In the end, the fight shows that nothing positive comes out of any form of domestic dispute. If the mother and father were to at least reason out a logical approach, the child would have lived and any thought of a united family again would present itself. However, that one element of a united family has been extinguished from their lives. Carver wanted to show that the child dying is the death note for the family and that there is truly nothing holding them together anymore. Now begins the troublesome road ahead for the two as they contemplate what they have just done to