Why Don't You Dance?

So I still haven't completely finished Brittni's selection from December, but I have read most of it. I'm going to save the rest for a rainy day(s), so that I can try to catch up again. I have enjoyed a lot of those short stories, although they all tend to be kind of dismal. They are thought provoking, and Raymond Carver does a great job of invoking mood and making you feel what the characters feel.

The story that stuck with me the most is the one called, "Why Don't You Dance?" It kind of bothered me at first actually, because it doesn't explain anything at all. There is no backstory to it. In context of the other stories in the book, one might suppose that it is about a guy whose marriage has failed and he is completely depressed. But I'm not sure we can assume that even. Maybe the wife died. Maybe he killed her and buried her under the floorboards. Maybe the wife just went away for the weekend and the husband had a bit too much to drink. Maybe there never was a wife, and the guy just lived in the house all by himself, and finally just gave in to the despair of loneliness and realized that all of his stuff means absolutely nothing to him.

In any case, the story starts out with him standing inside the house looking outside at all the furniture that he has placed on the front lawn. He leaves to get some more booze and a young couple comes along and, thinking it's a yard sale, stops to check it out. The man comes back and proceeds to sell them everything they want, and more, for as cheap as they are willing to pay. They all get real drunk and dance in the driveway to old records. The girl says, "You must be desperate, or something."

I think the thing that makes this story interesting is that we don't really know what happened to the guy, or how he is feeling. He says very little. Most of the dialogue in the story is from the boy and the girl. We can project our own ideas about it, but we have no idea what happened inside that house, or inside that guys head. We all live inside our own heads. Other people only see the external stuff. The girl sees all of his stuff put out on the lawn and thinks he must be desperate. But I believe the "or something", is closer to the truth. It bothers her because she can't figure it out, and it probably touches some fear inside her about her future together with the boy. But the guy doesn't really act desperate. He really seems as though he doesn't care at all. Desperation would be a few levels better.