Lucy Knipe
Essay #3 M01A
Contrast Essay
Steve Martin’s The Pleasure of my Company and Raymond Carver’s Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
The ancient fabulist Aesop famously wrote that “every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.” The truth as it pertains to love, is no different. In a juxtaposition of Steve Martin’s Pleasure of my Company and Raymond Carver’s Will You Please Be Quiet, Please, this duality of love’s power is both what unifies and creates distinction in these two very different pieces of work. There are three striking differences between these two works: dominate character arch, psychological narrative and literary style.
The first way The Pleasure of my Company and Will You Please Be Quiet, Please differ is that their respective protagonists Daniel Cambridge and Ralph Wyman have inverted character arcs. In The Pleasure of my Company, Daniel is introduced as psychologically unstable with self-imposed spatial boundaries in the form of curbs that either tremendously complicate his routes, or just keep him from straying too far from his apartment. …show more content…
All the interpersonal relationships in his life are either superficial or completely imaginary. A novel about the “masquerade of discomfort and struggle not with conformity but with the social act of living” (Stevens), Daniel’s mental illness has both complicated his ability to connect with the physical world and with other people. Ralph, on the other hand, is introduced in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please as a normal man- both mentally and emotionally stable. While there is an allusion to a time in Ralph’s youth that he needed, and found, direction, by all accounts at the start of the story “Ralph Wyman is relatively successful and content with his life” (Nesset 307). With a steady job, a house, two children and a wife he felt understood him as perfectly as he understood her, Ralph also “felt he understood himself- what he could do, what he could not do, and where he was headed”(Carver “Will You” 230). In both narratives, an event occurs that changes the course of these men’s lives. However, the natures of these events are extremely different. For Daniel, his life begins to transform after he instinctually runs outside to protect his therapists’ son Teddy from the child’s own estranged and aggressive father. In doing so, not only does he accidently prove to himself that he can forgo his usual spatial rules of engagement without the aid of another, but this action also marks the beginning of a meaningful relationship with both Teddy and his mother - something Daniel has had very little exposure to in his adult life. As Katherine Stevens describes on the Yale Book Review, “It takes extraordinary situations, such as the endangerment of his therapist’s child, for Daniel to realize that the stairs he climbs regularly are no different than the curbs he cannot seem to cross.” Daniel on some level already knew it was possible, as he had previously cleared the curb while following his neighbor Brian once before, but this particular event was the first time he is able to prove to himself that he can do it alone. While this event marks the beginning of a positive transition in Daniel’s life, in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please Ralph’s seemingly ideal life is shattered when he learns of his wife’s infidelity some four years before. Kirk Nesset describes how this event is used by Carver to indicate “how menace can lurk in the calmest of relationships for years before finally rising to the surface” (308). The solid foundation Ralph had been so sure of in his satisfactory and calm life was now falling out from under him like quicksand, and in turn was being replaced with violent thoughts and emotional exasperation. Instead of emotional progress, Ralph is experiencing emotional ruin. Through his anger his mind’s eye envisions looking down at his wife’s beaten face, with blood in her teeth while she arches her back suggestively begging for him to have sex with her. Overwhelmed by the sexual charged violence of his own imagination, Ralph felt like “he was going to vomit” (“Will You” 240). Daniel and Ralph ultimately find themselves approximating where the other began. While Daniel finds, and is ultimately made a better person by his ability to love others,
Essay #3 M01A
Contrast Essay
Steve Martin’s The Pleasure of my Company and Raymond Carver’s Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
The ancient fabulist Aesop famously wrote that “every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.” The truth as it pertains to love, is no different. In a juxtaposition of Steve Martin’s Pleasure of my Company and Raymond Carver’s Will You Please Be Quiet, Please, this duality of love’s power is both what unifies and creates distinction in these two very different pieces of work. There are three striking differences between these two works: dominate character arch, psychological narrative and literary style.
The first way The Pleasure of my Company and Will You Please Be Quiet, Please differ is that their respective protagonists Daniel Cambridge and Ralph Wyman have inverted character arcs. In The Pleasure of my Company, Daniel is introduced as psychologically unstable with self-imposed spatial boundaries in the form of curbs that either tremendously complicate his routes, or just keep him from straying too far from his apartment. …show more content…
All the interpersonal relationships in his life are either superficial or completely imaginary. A novel about the “masquerade of discomfort and struggle not with conformity but with the social act of living” (Stevens), Daniel’s mental illness has both complicated his ability to connect with the physical world and with other people. Ralph, on the other hand, is introduced in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please as a normal man- both mentally and emotionally stable. While there is an allusion to a time in Ralph’s youth that he needed, and found, direction, by all accounts at the start of the story “Ralph Wyman is relatively successful and content with his life” (Nesset 307). With a steady job, a house, two children and a wife he felt understood him as perfectly as he understood her, Ralph also “felt he understood himself- what he could do, what he could not do, and where he was headed”(Carver “Will You” 230). In both narratives, an event occurs that changes the course of these men’s lives. However, the natures of these events are extremely different. For Daniel, his life begins to transform after he instinctually runs outside to protect his therapists’ son Teddy from the child’s own estranged and aggressive father. In doing so, not only does he accidently prove to himself that he can forgo his usual spatial rules of engagement without the aid of another, but this action also marks the beginning of a meaningful relationship with both Teddy and his mother - something Daniel has had very little exposure to in his adult life. As Katherine Stevens describes on the Yale Book Review, “It takes extraordinary situations, such as the endangerment of his therapist’s child, for Daniel to realize that the stairs he climbs regularly are no different than the curbs he cannot seem to cross.” Daniel on some level already knew it was possible, as he had previously cleared the curb while following his neighbor Brian once before, but this particular event was the first time he is able to prove to himself that he can do it alone. While this event marks the beginning of a positive transition in Daniel’s life, in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please Ralph’s seemingly ideal life is shattered when he learns of his wife’s infidelity some four years before. Kirk Nesset describes how this event is used by Carver to indicate “how menace can lurk in the calmest of relationships for years before finally rising to the surface” (308). The solid foundation Ralph had been so sure of in his satisfactory and calm life was now falling out from under him like quicksand, and in turn was being replaced with violent thoughts and emotional exasperation. Instead of emotional progress, Ralph is experiencing emotional ruin. Through his anger his mind’s eye envisions looking down at his wife’s beaten face, with blood in her teeth while she arches her back suggestively begging for him to have sex with her. Overwhelmed by the sexual charged violence of his own imagination, Ralph felt like “he was going to vomit” (“Will You” 240). Daniel and Ralph ultimately find themselves approximating where the other began. While Daniel finds, and is ultimately made a better person by his ability to love others,