Raymond Carver's "Boxes"

Have you ever had that eerie feeling in the back of your mind that something just is not right? It is as if there is some unknown reason that a situation has a different meaning then what is obvious. This feeling is the disguised backbone of Raymond Carver's story, 'Boxes'. In this story the son seems to be experiencing this feeling as his mother decides to move again. There are gaps in the story line …

…'The son will never see his mother again because she is going to die', we still get that from the text. This fits with Carver's style of writing because the reader can never tell until the end of the story what the meaning is. In the case of 'Boxes', the reader must read through the story and pick up on these gaps and what they mean before piecing together what Carver is trying to accomplish.