Concepcion Arellano Discussion 13

I have always thought that an author’s best friend was the thesaurus so they could find the best words to make a story come to life. The readings we have done from Raymond Carver have changed my mind, as his simple writing still painted a picture of the character’s psyche and their surrounding environment. I realized it doesn’t take illustrious and fancy words to captivate the audience or to get a point across. I appreciated that his reading did not involve the work of having to search various definitions and rereading the same line to understand how the word was used. This realization reminds me of the recent story “The Five-Forty-Eight” by John Cheever, particularly the lines ” When she was out for lunch, he called personnel and asked them to fire her. Then he took the afternoon off”(505). The author did not use any adjectives or descriptive language but revealed more about Blake through these simple sentences. Through simple words, it is revealed how much of a coward Blake is when he did not fire her personally. On the contrary, he chose to leave early to further avoid any confrontation.