The short story called ”Why, Honey?” written by Raymond Carver was interesting to read, though it took a while to understand every part of it as it should. The story made up many thoughts on my mind.

The mother is worried about her son who has disappeared and left his mother many years ago. The situation between the son and the mother is complicated, sad and even tragic.  As a comprehension part I´m going to discuss about what does the mother accuse the son of? And what evidence does she give to back up her claims? :

1.The mother hears something  terrifying from her neighbour.  Her son might  got involved  into their cat´s (Trudy) dead. The neighbour had seen two boys in the field putting firecrackers in Trudy´s ears and in her anus.  At the moment mother thinks that her son wouldn´t do a thing like that, but when the son tells to the mother not to take it too hard because Trudy was old already, she changes her mind and even believes the neighbours story.

2.After  the ill-fated death of the cat, the mother recognizers another problem, lying. The son was supposed to work as a stockboy at Harley´s.  The night came when he was to draw his first check, and the mother asks how much did he earn. The son answers:  “ 80 dollars.” The mother has to doubt it because it was way more than she thought.  When the mother did the laundry, she founds  the stub from Harley´s in his pocket where is number of the son´s real wage (28 dollars).

3.The mother surmises, that if she would ask her son to tell where did he go last night, the son would maybe answer “to the show” but actually he might went to the school dance or spent the evening riding around with somebody in a car. The reason why she believes that the son might lie again and again is that he has been dishonest very often.

4.Once the son was supposed to have gone on a field trip and the mother naturally asked him what did he see back there? The son starts to tell nonsense about a desert and its history assuming that the mother would believe him. The mother does believe but suddenly the next day she gets a note from the school saying they wanted a permission for a field trip which moment in time would be soon hereafter. Therefore again the son made up the story.

5.Near the end of the son´s senior year  the mother was concerned about his grades and worried also because she was not able to know enough about her son daily activities. The mother notices the bloody shirt, the shotgun and the knife but she wasn`t able to find any groceries though the son said he had been “an appetite hunting”. Furthermore the son was very nervous and lied that he just had a bloody nose and that’s why the shirt was totally wet and full of blood. The mother may have thought that the son had done something very horrible.

7. One night the mother surprises badly the son in his room while he was bent over by the dresser and quickly slammed the drawer  and turned to the mother and shout that he is sick of spying him all the time. The mother got very confused and cried herself to sleep. She claimed that the son broke her heart that night.

8. In my opinion almost every claims of the mother was fair enough and realistic, but considering each of the claims in turn, the evidences were sometimes more clearly convincing than other ones. The tragic dead of the Trudy cat was horrible and the neighbours story was reliable.  I do not think that lying to parents about everything is ever acceptable. The mother has rights to be angry and at least confused and sad when the son acts like he does with wages, show, field trip, bloody shirt, kneeling and “surveillance.”

9. She talks very vaguely and distantly about her son to show how little she had contact with him. She never mentions the sons name or any positive things about him. “Who I am afraid is him” “he was good boy expect for his outbursts and that he could not tell the truth.” “I can´t give you any reasons”  “I should be proud but I´m afraid”

10. The mother is hiding somewhere and she´s scared. She is probably alone because she doesn´t want anyone from the past life to know where she is. The narrator is writing because someone who needed to contact her has found out where she is and wrote a letter to her too.

11. Yes, I do believe that the narrator is reliable. She writes and tells the whole story systematically and clearly. “I am very ashamed” “I have been praying no one knew” “but you did. Why did you?”

12. I guess the mother is writing to an old friend or to the sons wife.