We got this assignment with different variations and I
chose to read short story Why, Honey? by Raymond Carver
from our English text book. I decided to pick this one
because I enjoy reading this kind of mysterious stories
which let the reader use his/her imagination at intervals.
The story is written as letter from a mother to some man
who asks about her son. In the letter mother tells her and
her son’s story how they got apart.
The mother thinks that everything beganat her son’s
roughly 15th Independence Day when their cat, named
Trudy, got lost. Their neighbors told her that some boys
brutally tormented Trudy at nearby field and they were
pretty sure that one of the boys were her son. The son did
act caring but after he was neutral about Trudy.
This event was just the beginning of his odd behavior.
The mother isn’t able to understand why he had to lie about
everyday things like his earnings. This lying thing continued.
Mom got permission ask for field trip from the school, but
weird thing was that last day son had told her how amazing
things he saw at field trip that day.
As son grew up, so did distance between mom and son.
He bought a car and started hunting. One night son didn’t
appear back home from hunting trip. Mom spent whole
night worrying and finally at the morning he came back. But
he didn’t answer exactly where he had been, just laughed
at his mom’s worry. Mom decided to check son’s car trunk
while he was in the shower. She found hunting stuff from
the trunk, but bloody t-shirt made it impossible to keep
questions inside her. She couldn’t sleep for couple of nights.
One night she went to son’s room, but answer was furious.
Son blamed her on stalking etc. and next day he left the
apartment.
Rest of the letter tells how mother didn’t see her son ever
again. She just heard how he had continued his life, became

marine, got married and also got into politics. She became
scared of him which made her change her name, move, get
unknown phone number. Mother never got to know what
she did wrong and what made son hate her so much. She just
keeps wondering; ”Why, honey, why?”

Written by Robert