Blog #1: 2nd Semester-Chef's House

For my first blog back, I decided to do an option of my choice. This choice would be just giving an overview of the short story I read, Chef's House by Raymond Carver. To avoid being "book report like," I added some things I found throughout the story and a few questions at the bottom for open discussion. :)

The story took place a little north of Eureka during the summertime. There was Wes, a recovered alcoholic who was dating someone at the time, and a man named Chef, also a recovered alcoholic, but he owned this house north of Eureka. Wes' ex wife, Edna, was also dating someone at the time, but Wes convinced her to break up with him and move into Chef's house with him. Wes broke up with his girlfriend too, so they would reunite their family once again. Wes and Edna had two kids, Cheryl and Bobby. They were grown, so they weren't in the picture much.

Everything was perfect after Edna moved in with Wes. They enjoyed most of their time together. They would go fishing, see movies, and Wes would attend with "Don't Drink" meetings with Chef. Considering it had been about two years since the two reunited, they seemed to have fallen in love all over again up until Chef had no choice but to kick them out. His sister, Linda, had just been left by her husband, which gave her and her child nowhere to go. Being the older brother, Chef had no choice but to provide a place to live for them, so he had to break the news to Wes and Edna. Wes wasn't happy about it at all. Edna did all she could to calm him down, and it suddenly hit them. The couple started to clean up the house and that was the end of it.

There was a lot of conflict I saw though. The internal conflict with Edna was whether to leave her boyfriend for Wes or not. Eventually, she did, and was very happy after that. An example of external conflict was when Chef had to kick the couple out of the house. Although he didn't want to and was very sorry, he had to do what he had to do. You can't blame a man for putting his family first.

What was the theme of this short story?

What other conflicts did the story obtain?

In a personal opinion, what would be your first thoughts and actions to being kicked out of your home?



I pictured Chef's house to be set in a place like this. It's not exactly the ideal home, but the land is great. It has a pond and lots of open land in the back.