”Why, Honey?” is a short story written by Raymond Carver. The story itself is in a form of a letter sent by a concerned but scared mother to an unknown man. The letter is a bit mysterious because it doesn’t reveal any names except for a Mr. Cooper, Fred and Betty Wilks. Mr. Cooper is their neighbour, Fred is the son’s schoolmate and Betty Wilks is a friend of the mother. At first, the mother sounds very concerned about her son but in the end she says she’s afraid.
The mother is implying too much in my opinion. In the case with their cat, Trudy, dying, she sounds suspisious after her son told not to worry and that their cat was very old.
What comes to the wages, she didn’t really think it through. Why would her son lie about getting more money than he actually got? Maybe he earned it due to working overtime or completing some extra task which made him get more money.
I understand the part when the son bought a shotgun and a knife. However, he said he had been hunting. What if he wanted to take up a new hobby with his mates? After all, he did join the marines later.
I’m not really sure whether the mother got the note about field trip a bit late or her son actually was mad. This part really confused me. This seems to be quite convincing evidence.
Why would the mother be suspecting something due to a bloody shirt? She could take her son to the doctor’s in case he had been shot or if he had been in a fight. Other than that, the evidence is not really convincing.
In the kneeling part the son asked her mom to kneel down so he could show something. The mother ran to her room and locked herself up. Why’d she do that if she wanted to hear the truth? Maybe her son was going to tell something important but she was too careless to hear what her son had in mind. On the other hand, why would her son want her to kneel? He could’ve just asked her to sit down if he had something to say.
The surveillance part sounds like the mother is getting mad instead of her son. I think she was a bit paranoid if she thought that someone was spying on her. Maybe she thought that because she herself had been spying on her son.
Altogether, I don’t think her evidence is convincing. The pieces don’t seem to fit together, atleast for me. Some of the evidence is convincing but some not.
The mother makes her claims seem portentous so she could defend her opinions. She does this by suspecting the worst in every case. Like in the kneeling part she just runs to her room without saying anything. Why would she do that?
The last paragraph gives me the idea of her needing psychological care or someone to talk to. At first she says she wanted someone to know and that she’s ashmed. So at first she seems grateful that she was written to. However, right after that, she starts asking how the writer got her address and that she’s been praying that no one would know her address. So she’s grateful and then again afraid which after she seems quite neutral and asks how the writer got her address. This doesn’t make the narrator more reliable. In fact it makes the narrator unreliable to tell such things to a stranger who maybe could end her son’s career with the information. But nothing was said about the receiver of the letter so it could be a good letter as well.
I think the mother is writing to her ex-husband or to her son. Starting with the words ”Dear sir” suggests that she’s writing to someone who’s rather old so it also supports the fact that she’s writing to her ex-husband. But how could her ex-husband get her new name and contact information? It might be via the son but it also suggests that she’s writing to her son instead of her ex-husband. Once again, the mother says it’s hard because there’s no father in the house. That would suggest that the father is written to. He might’ve asked how their son had worked his way up all the way to a governor or just how was their son’s past.