“You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this.” (Raymond Carver, A Small, Good Thing)
Maybe reading is also a small, good thing? I am finally back in the swing of reading for pleasure and, as a treat to myself, I re-read for the umpteenth time Raymond Carver’s short story, “A Small, Good Thing.”
The story appears to be about a couple as they try to deal with the aftermath of their son being hit by a car. But I think the story is really about the human condition and, more specifically, about forgiveness.
Spoiler Alert
In the story, the couple’s son, Scotty, dies after being struck by a car on his 8th birthday. The couple was initially led to believe that Scotty would wake up and get better, but Scotty never wakes up. The couple is devastated.
The doctor tells the couple that Scotty died of an extremely rare injury – a “one-in-a-million circumstance” – and that even if they had discovered it and gotten him into surgery right away, Scotty was unlikely to recover. The death of their young son is painful for the couple, especially since Scotty was struck on the day of his 8th birthday. But what makes the death even more painful is that they keep getting anonymous phone calls. Someone keeps calling them and asking them, “Have you forgotten about Scotty?”
The couple eventually figures it out: the creep that’s been calling and hanging up on them is the baker, the “not jolly … not rude, just abrupt” man with whom the mother had made an order for Scotty’s party. So, fuelled by their anger and grief, the couple head over to the bakery to give the baker a piece of their mind – but when they get there, their anger gives way to frustration and release.
The bakery is warm and the smell of bread is inviting on the cold evening. And the baker, after he learns what has happened with Scotty, is apologetic and caring. He offers them freshly baked rolls and encourages them to eat – really eat – for the first time since the accident.
Forgiveness
The scene in the bakery is a pivotal one. The mother is livid and appears ready to physically fight the baker. The baker too is ready for a fight – he grips a nearby rolling pin and growls at the trespassing couple. But then, all at once, the mother becomes deflated and cries. And the baker, who comes across as a vile creep throughout the story, becomes soft and nurturing.
I used to think that the sudden change in their behaviour was Carver’s way of talking about the power of grief and pain – that we can’t run from that kind of emotional intensity, either as the person that experiences it or witnesses it. But now, I think this moment is also about forgiveness – about starting anew. I don’t mean just that the characters forgave each other for their transgressions, but that they forgive each other’s past actions so that they could talk and comfort each other, to get to know one another.
I’m thinking of Hannah Arendt’s concept of forgiveness
For Arendt, forgiveness wasn’t so much about affect but about political action. We need to be able to forgive others, she claims, because “[w]ithout being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover” (p. 237, The Human Condition).
Arendtian action is about spontaneity and diversity – about plurality in the public realm. But we can’t appreciate plurality if we condemn others for their past actions. So, when we forgive others, we end the predictable cycle of violent reactions and start at Ground Zero; we liberate others so that we may be free. As Alice Maclachan explains,
“Arendtian readiness to forgive displays a willingness to re-enter the sphere of political debate with former enemies and combatants, forsaking the apolitical methods of vengeance and violence. Forgiveness returns the actor and the act to the shared political realm. It does not signal an end or final reconciliation, therefore, but – like all Arendtian political action – a new beginning.”
So, in a moment of spontaneity and grief and exhaustion at the bakery, the characters in Carver’s story seemingly decide to forgive each other – in the Arendtian sense of the word. The rest of the story has them sitting together at the baker’s small table, in his bakery, splitting bread and sharing stories. Their past indiscretions melt away with the butter on their rolls, and we are left feeling like a new relationship will replace an old one.
The act and the actor
Maclachan thinks that Arendt’s concept of forgiveness is not enough on its own to safeguard the public realm from political violence. However, I think that it is at least a necessary condition for plurality in the public realm. Arendt’s notion of forgiveness highlights the value of seeing someone for who they are, as opposed to what they’ve done. And this is so important when power dynamics threaten to silence or otherwise further marginalize some groups.
Take, for instance, what is happening in the city of Cambridge, Ontario. I’ve talked about the city before in a previous post, but it is worth saying again that the city is a strange hotspot for anti-addiction groups. In fact, not too long ago, there was a protest at Cambridge City Hall that was supposed to call attention to inaction on the part of the municipal government, but transformed into a hate-mongering rally that objectified people with addiction.
Slogans like “Taxpayers’ lives matter,” “Arrest the criminals,” and “Our children deserve safety” were observed at the protest. To me, such phrases indicate just the opposite of what Arendt might have hoped for in the public realm. There’s no room for forgiveness if we reduce people we disagree with into mere caricatures or ‘villains’. We can’t interact with human beings we don’t see as persons – they become objects to be handled, ‘taken care of.’ So, as I said almost a year ago, it seems like the public realm in Cambridge is eroding because plurality is eroding, because there is no forgiveness.
Holding on, Letting Go
Arendtian forgiveness reminds me of Hilde Lindemann’s book, Holding and Letting Go: The Social Practice of Personal Identities. In the book, Lindemann discusses the inherent relationality of personal identities. The title of her book reveals her general position: others can affect who we are and become. If others hold us as a certain person, we might become stuck in that role, even if it is oppressive. Others have to let us go, to a certain extent, so that we can review and revise the stories that partly constitute who we are.
What is striking about this position is the implication then that others get a say over our personhood. We may all be human beings, as Arendt says, but we become persons through actions; our actions disclose who, not what, we are. But if some of us get held up, confined to certain behaviours or crucified for past actions, that is, if others are unwilling to forgive them, then some folks won’t get to be persons.
Forgiveness as Harm Reduction
The characters in Carver’s story are, at first, each other’s ‘villain.’ For the couple who just lost their son, for most of the story, the baker is the creep who seems to taunt them about their loss. For the baker, for most of the story, the mother is someone who adds to his financial woes. And yet, at the end of the story, they are more like companions, comrades in grief and pain. They support each other – emotionally and physically – because they’ve forgiven each other and see the other for who they are and not what they’ve done.
This is what I hope for in Cambridge. I hope that there can be transformation of the ‘characters’ in the stories of Cambridge citizens. Those who are villains now, I hope, will become just another character, so that ultimately everyone becomes more than a human being – a person. It seems like such a small, good thing but I think so much could come of it.
Credits
Photo by Scott Umstattd on Unsplash