An Arm and a Leg (You Can Keep the Rest)

Upon reading "Popular Mechanics" by Raymond Carver, I personally would like to know what happened to Carver as a child to cause him to think of a story such as this. All joking aside, though, this story is rather startling. In what is hopefully supposed to be a gross exaggeration of divorce, the husband and wife in the story argue so violently over custody of their baby that they literally rip their child in two. Eww. Yet this brazenly macabre story carries with it a much deeper--and less violent--meaning. The literal tug-of-war match between father and mother reflects the vicious custody battle that so often accompanies divorce settlements. The father and mother both want as much as possible, and the child is helplessly pulled around like a possession. When an agreement is finally reached--when "the issue [is] decided" (p 345)--the child often is essentially torn in two, forced to live between two separate households with separate possessions, separate parents, and separate homes.

This separation of the sense of home has the deepest effect on the child, as they often feel that their love for their parents is often split in two. Divorcing spouses often are so occupied with attempting to take what they believe is rightfully theirs that they inflict great pain and trauma on their children, just as the man and woman in Carver's tale are so determined to take the baby for their own that they tear their own child into pieces. How lovely.