Raymond Carver's "Vitamins" and the Discourses of the Vietnam War

Abstract

By integrating the discourses of the Vietnam War into the texture of his short story "Vitamins," Raymond Carver would like to emphasize that the war was not only fought outside the United States. The present paper is an attempt to show how Carver connects the mechanics of the battlefield to the discourses of similar kind present in the individual and social spheres of the latter part of the twentieth century in America – a view consistent with Carver's interest in drawing attention to the contextual motives behind his characters' moods and actions. Providing an understanding of both Carver's short narrative and the period in which it was written and received, this paper investigates the various clashes of the story's characters within the broader social conflicts surrounding the issues of poverty, racism, and sexism.