International Journal of Language & Literature

Post-Industrial Universe in Raymond Carver’s selected Short Stories: Reification of Subjects
Dr. Farid Parvaneh, Marzieh Hashemi

Abstract
Raymond Carver, a minimalist postmodern short story writer, is famous for his famous saying about Regan’s America. As a critic of American consumerist society, Carver explores the dark side of life through short stories. The present study is an attempt to illustrate the nature of repression in Carver’s three stories, namely "The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off", "Elephant", and "Where I'm Calling From". It seeks to demonstrate how these short stories exemplify material possession, complacency, and story-telling as repressive strategies adopted by the characters to conceal or suppress their anxieties. The argument is in the light of Fredric Jameson's critique of postmodern Culture Industry and reveals how the dominant ideology in America of the 70s and 80s reify and commodify the lives of its subject individuals in the era of post-industrial capitalism.

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