Popular Mechanics Raymond Carver

Words: 1331
Pages: 6

“Popular Mechanics” by Raymond Carver is a short story that tells us about a couple’s relationship that is struggling and the conflict between this man and woman in who should keep the baby, in the end no one gets the baby as the fight leads to them tugging at the baby. The tone of the story is angry and aggressive.This story relates to actual family problems that occur in many households today. According to the article Children Divorce Statistics, “Children of divorced parents are fifty percent more likely to develop health problems than children in two parent families”(Children and Divorce). The parents situation doesn’t only affect them but their baby as well.
The only characters that are introduced in this story are a man, a woman, and a baby. We don’t get any indication that this is a married couple, but we can assume that they have a relationship since they live together and have a baby. The story starts outside where we get a description of the weather, which sets the mood of the story that
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I enjoyed reading this story, even though this child gets injured, you can picture every detail carver includes in the story and it describes many common households today in the United States. Many parents don’t have a good relationship after the are divorced, and many of the parents don’t realize that they are hurting their children too. In the book “Deconstructing the Impact of Divorce on Children” by Sol Rappaport he explains parents in divorces. “Children whose parents put them in the middle of ongoing unresolved conflict face an increased risk of difficulties postdivorce. Research shows that the type of conflict, the child's level of exposure to it, and whether the child is the focus of the conflict affects a child's postdivorce adjustment”