"No Other Word Will Do"​: Language and Narrative Unreliability in Raymond Carver's "Blackbird Pie"​

In his last collection Where I’m Calling From (1988), Raymond Carver (1938-1988) included seven new stories that saw him moving in a new direction, while still dealing with similar topics to his early collections. Carver found success through What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), in which he told tales of loss in a sparse and rather bleak language. Characters attempt to deal with alcoholism, unemployment and separation, among others, but find themselves unable to overcome their ailments. They are often unable to assess their problems, and cannot use language productively. Thus, many of the early stories end in silence or stagnation, as the people populating these stories go on with their lives, defeated. Carver's late collections, namely Cathedral (1983) and Where I'm Calling From, saw the author become more generous and, at times, optimistic, as his stories became more expansive and his characters more aware of language. Carver's last collection in particular, of which criticism is still heavily lacking, ventures into new grounds, becoming less and less minimalistic. "Blackbird Pie" is one such story that finds Carver delving into narrative reliability and language by presenting a set of narratives saturated with ambiguity and symbolism. This story is a fine example of Carver's quality as a writer, yet it has hardly been analyzed. The present paper seeks to explore Raymond Carver's novel portrayal of the language of the loss of love. It will do so by analyzing, through close textual analysis, the language used by the characters and the ambiguity derived from it.