Change

“A Small, Good Thing” was an interesting short story to read. The story was written close to the end of Raymond Carver life so he wanted to make it special. The story contains some religious aspects even though Carver wasn’t really a religious man. The innocent boy was struck by a car on his way to school. The boy was representation of death to the innocence just like Christ. He arose from his comma three days later just like Christ arose from death. The story also involves a sense of rebirth which the author himself went through. Raymond Carver was a serious alcoholic and stopped years later and focused more on writing. The parents of Scotty where reborn because everything in their life seem to be going perfect and a huge issue could have possible ruined everything for the couple but it actually brought them together. The old grumpy baker also experiences a rebirth because the incident caused him to once again gain human emotions and learn how to socialize with people. The baker being grumpy is also ironic because his occupation makes people happy so something earlier in his life had to happen to cause him to become antisocial