Raymond Carver Teenage Sexual Frustration and Repressed Term Paper

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Raymond Carver

Teenage sexual frustration and repressed anger pervade Raymond Carver's short story "Nobody Said Anything." Although the bulk of the tale covers the narrator's playing hooky from school, the fishing expedition serves mainly as a dramatic and symbolic backdrop for his parents' marital problems. The story begins and ends with tense moments at home, during which mother and father fight furiously while neglecting their two children. The parents do not take their anger out on the kids through overt violence, but they nevertheless emotionally neglect their children, saying nothing to address their feelings. The adolescent narrator struggles to impress his parents, especially his father, by catching a monstrous fish. However, his quest for attention is thwarted and only results in his getting scolded. The fish anecdote serves as a means to indirectly address the narrator's pain; it is a convenient metaphor for divorce, and the disgusting imagery of the dead fish drives home themes of anger and frustration that comprise "Nobody Said Anything.

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The mother loves her kids, but is unfortunately too preoccupied with her own situation to properly discipline or nurture her two boys. For example, she allows the narrator to stay home from school when he feigns being ill and instructs him to not watch television. However, when she sees that the boy has turned on the TV, she says nothing to reprimand him; she is too busy getting ready for work all "stirred up," (5). The father, on the other hand, remains a cold and distant figure throughout the story. The narrator only refers to him briefly, mainly through the medium of fishing, as he used to take the boys to Birch Creek. When the narrator sees the steelhead, he immediately thinks of catching it as a trophy to win back his father's affection. When neither parent is pleased with the sight of the carcass, the narrator nevertheless remains glad that he held "that half of him," the half of….....

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