The Bath Literary Analysis Essay

“The Bath” by Raymond Carver discusses the themes of communication, or rather the lack thereof. At certain points of the story this theme is clearly being presented by the narrative. For example: once Scotty is hit by a car his friend runs up and asks: “what if felt like to be hit by a car” (48). But Scotty never answers as he didn’t feel like talking anymore. This is one example that shows lack of communication in the story that is clearly portrayed by the narrative.
The narrative utilized another method of showing the theme which is through leaving out important information. The narrative rarely gave characters names nor personalities. The narrative even talks about Scotty with using almost no emotion, such as only referring to him as “the boy”: “Monday morning, the boy was walking to school” (48). No description is given to important characters such as the Father or the Mother. In doing this, the narrative takes away an emotional connection to the characters as well as separating them from each
The baker assures that the cake will be: “ready Monday morning, in plenty of time for the party Monday afternoon” (48). The father decides to take a mental break from the hospital and go home. Here, he gets an unexpected phone call from an unknown person: “There’s a cake that wasn’t picked up” (49). We as the reader know that this is the baker that the mother has talked to earlier in the story. But because of the sporadic events that unfold after this exchange the mother never told the father about the cake. The baker, unaware of the condition of the child he just made a cake for, calls multiple times, scaring the family unintentionally while trying to get them to pay him the money they owe him. Neither the father nor the baker know of the dilemmas that they are both in. The narrative leaves this important information out of the story to contribute to the theme of communication in the