Raymond Carvers short story, what is named as ”Why, Honey?” tells about mother and son. There are some difficulties in story, for example that the boy is not able to be truthful and since he turned to fifteen weird things were starting to happen. For example Trudy, the cat of the family was founded by neighbor and it was cut up. Later mother recognizes that it might have been her own son who had killed the cat.
The mother accuses the son of cutting up the cat, lying of the wages and much more, maybe killing someone, because of finding a bloody shirt alongside shotgun and knife from the trunk. The boy also lies to his mother of every trifle such as a field trip where he hasn’t even been. The mother feels awful for that she can’t make the boy change and maybe she is also a bit despondent because as a mother she might feel like she have screwed up with raising her child.
I think that the mother’s claims are very airtight, because his son is clearly covering something up from her and laying more than a lot.The neighbor, Mr Cooper saw two boys in the field putting firecrackers in Trudy’s ears and he thought that the another was the son of hers, so in my opinion it is a huge evidence and when the boy said ”don’t take it too hard mom” it was just attesting the supposition to right one. And when the mother asked about the salary, it was also a definite evidence of lying when she found the stub. At the moment when the shirt was found from the trunk the mother surely understood that it wasn’t an accident and for all that the shirt was as if hidden as it was rolled up and the son didn’t mention it before the mother found it. Then the mother certainly became aware of everything was not alright and got the idea of her son might have murdered someone. More than that boy’s behaving proves it. The way the boy behaves for example of the mothers surveillance seems to prove a lot.
The mother brings out the information in a sinister way in the letter by repeating words “I am afraid”, that can be understood as if she is afraid of that his son could hurt her physically just like the cat or the one he might have murdered. From the final paragraph of the letter narrates that the mother wants to share her experiences with someone, instead of staying alone with her thoughts. In my opinion the narrator seems to be reliable and it could be possible that she is writing to her ex-partner who is the father of the boy, because she speaks so familiarly, tells a lot of the boy and in a letter she also mention that there is no man or father in the house, which doesn’t tell if they have for example divorced. That would also explain why “sir” writes to her, of course he is also concerned about his son. Why the mother calls him “sir”? Maybe because they haven’t kept in touch for a long time and it might seems too close if she would have used his first name.
