A Small Good Thing

Choose a character from the story. Using examples from it, describe how Carver depicts your chosen character. What did you learn from the text about this person—both within themselves and in relation to the world?

Touch is a motif throughout the story. Identify an episode where touch helps express what a character is feeling. What are they feeling, and how does their use of physical contact express it?

What does the story convey about the Black family Ann encounters at the hospital? How does Carver’s description of them contrast with his portrayal of the Weiss family?

What kind of mother is Ann? Find examples in the text that show how she behaves toward Scotty. How do her feelings about motherhood change during the story? Identify the passage that shows this change.

How does Carver portray the life of a baker? If the story gave you a different understanding of a baker’s work, how did it change? Give examples from the text that affected it.

What would be different about this story if it were written today? What would stay the same? Identify an aspect of the characterization, the world, or the plot that would differ and one that would stay the same.

Carver uses a third-person omniscient point of view, meaning that he can access the inner world of every character. Which character did you identify with most? How do you think you might fare in this kind of tragic situation?

Carver deploys bathos, giving the story an anticlimactic ending. What would a more traditional ending look like—one in which the baker doesn’t back down immediately? Write an alternative ending based on where the characters are in their respective arcs—their emotional journeys. What might happen inside the bakery instead?