It's funny that you bring up the "Negro family" in the waiting room of the hospital. When I first read the story this was one of those things that stuck out to me as important, but, like you, couldn't really figure out why. When I went back and reread the story, I began to see a theme emerging: shared experiences. Twice in the story, Carver points out the idea that the mother sees a connection with another human being. During the opening scene in the bakery, carver write about how Ann is made to feel uncomfortable by the actions of the baker; while the baker was not curt, he was very direct. In regards to the baker's demeanor, Carver states, "She was a mother and thirty-three years old, and it seemed to her that everyone, especially someone the baker's age would have children who'd gone through the special time of cake and birthday parties. There must be that between them, she thought" (280). In this scene, Ann is making an assumption about the baker (one that is ultimately incorrect), but she is trying to identify something that they have in common; something that these two different people share.
It was also with this lens that I read the scene with the "Negro family" in the waiting room of the hospital. In this scene, Ann sees that these two families with seemingly nothing in common do have something that binds them. (As a aside, I oddly enough pictured the Ann, Howard, and Scotty as African- American until this point in the story. It was not until the "Negro family" mistook Ann for a doctor that I began to view them as white.) Through the African-American woman's response to Ann as she enters the waiting room, the reader can tell the despair and pain she and her family were in. Ann felt compelled to talk to the family, and they exchanged stories about their sons. "She [Ann] wanted to talk more with these people who were in the same kind of waiting she was in. She was afraid, and they were afraid. They had that in common" (291). In this instant, Ann seems to find some comfort in their commiseration over their shared experiences of tragedy. Ann wanted to tell these strangers more about her son and the accident, about his birthday, and that he was still unconscious. The connections that she found with these people she didn't know seemed to be a very important piece of the story.
2 comments:
I think that is a great way to look at this story. As soon as you said that I realized the importance of that family.. or at least one element of importance. In regards to how we are going to teach it, I think this is a great way to develop a unit. (I haven't gotten my NCTE book yet, so I don't know what that suggests.)
Though I'm sure that you didn't plan on having this be a main focus of the response to your post - I found it so interesting that you intially thought Ann and Scotty were Black. I thought the same thing.. especially when the baker was giving her a hard time. I began to think about why he would be so short with her and the only reasons I could think of were because she was a woman or because she was a different race. Like you, after the encounter in the waiting room I realized that she was not Black.
that's so funny...i didn't picture ann and howard as black. i didn't really picture them at all... i couldn't get over how many times he called the family in the waiting room "Negro". why is that important? is it important to carver, or does carver want to make it seem important to ann? and most tellingly, is it important to us as the reader? would it be important to our students?
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