Project 2
POV Adaptation and modification of “So Much Water” by Raymond Carver
I make a point to appreciate my wife’s meal even though I am not really that hungry. I’m a little tired and she catches me staring off into the distance. Claire seems concerned but I don’t understand her worry. She remarks that she thinks I am staring at her but just then the telephone rings.
“Don’t answer it,” I say coldly.
“It might be your mother,” she replies.
Her persistence is annoying at best so I tell her to answer it if she must. I stop eating, her face as she listens is enough to make me lose my temper. I consider showing calm but I am over her persistence and meddling in my business. I yell towards her, “tell me what I did wrong and I’ll listen! I wasn’t the only man there.” I know that what I did was a group decision. We discussed outcomes and knew we couldn’t just turn around. “Claire, I won’t have you passing judgement,” I remark sternly. She wasn’t even there, she wouldn’t have made a better decision. The girl was dead and that was that. I’m sick of her making me feel this way.
“That’s the point,” she continues on.
She’s really getting on my nerves and I’ve had enough of it. I don’t need to explain myself to her. I trudge outside away from Claire with a cigarette and a beer to find a newspaper waiting for me. I am well aware she can still see me but I don’t care.
I see my name glaring at me on the first page along with the names of my friends. I am processing this information when, from the kitchen, I hear a loud crash of dishes break across the floor. I don’t acknowledge her actions. Why should I?
My good friends Gordon Johnson, Mel Dorn, and Vern Williams like to play poker, bowl, and fish with me. We are all very like minded men. We are family men who take care of our jobs. They have sons and daughters who go to school with my son.
Just last Friday, all of us men hiked around the Naches River hoping to catch some fish. A few of them saw the girl before they had even set up camp. Mel Dorn had discovered her out over the water in some branches and had called us over urgently. We debated over what to do but in the end, most of us men were exhausted from the journey and agreed that she wasn’t going anywhere. We decided to set up camp and went back to the girl, pulling her up on the shore so that nothing more would happen to her.
The next morning, we acted as if nothing was wrong. We cooked breakfast, drank coffee, and drank whiskey, and then split up to fish. That night, we continued the same activities.
In the morning, we headed out, the girl still tethered to the tree. We made a stop at the telephone where I told the sheriff about her. He then took down all of our names and statements. We weren’t afraid because we had nothing to hide. We were good, typical men.
When I got home, I stumbled into the kitchen. Clearly a little too loudly because Claire came out of our room. I hugged her, a can of beer in one hand and the other rubbing her back. I then went to bed, tired of the whole ordeal at the river.
Artist Statement
I chose to modify “So Much Water” by Carver because of the unique simplicity of the story and the words used. They were slightly restrained and held back which would give me the opportunity to come up with how I believe Stuart would have acted. I also saw a great opportunity to shift the POV to Stuart, the husband. Stuart’s character was seen through the eyes of Claire, his wife, and I got the opportunity to write about Stuart and Claire through Stuart’s POV. The original text was of the wife, Claire, and her concern about the situation at hand. What she knew was that her husband was going away on a trip but then had to find out about the dead girl which caused her to worry. What I wrote was from Satuart’s perspective. How he believed he and his friends made the right decision. How they had nothing to hide and freely gave up their names to the sheriff. It was a slight challenge keeping the language so simple and the sentences short. It seems like a story which should include more detail and emotion but this piece is written in a compellingly uncomplicated manner. There are many small scenes but none are too lengthy. I also wanted to write in a way I felt Stuart would write. He seems like a simple man who doesn’t talk in long sentences or exaggerated tones. I wanted to portray him as slightly distant. One example of this is when Claire seems to poke at him and edges him on to respond but instead of talking back, he simply gets up and leaves. He also uses actions sometimes rather than words to make a point. For example, when he leaves to sit outback, he knows she can see him and knows he heard the dishes crash but he won’t give her the satisfaction of acknowledging the noise. It was also slightly difficult to write from a grown man’s perspective. I haven’t had much practice writing from the male perspective so I had to take what was written originally and transform it into how I thought Stuart would have acted. I see him as a pensive, simple, and generic man. He doesn’t seem to have any unique qualities and in my mind, has a more shy demeanor. I took how he talked to Claire in the original and used that to modify the short story into his perspective.It was difficult for me not to overwrite and add too much detail. POV makes a dramatic difference to the reader and how they perceive the piece of literature. From re-writing this story in a new perspective, it is evident that POV changes a lot. POV ultimately changes the reader’s perception of the story based on which characters perspective it is being told from. These different perspectives will have different tones, different words used, and all together different emotions associated with the situation. By adjusting the POV, the reader is able to see into a different character’s mind where they would have originally been on the outside or vice versa.
