Neighbors Raymond Carver

754 Words4 Pages
Meet the Millers In the story “Neighbors” by Raymond Carver, Bill and Arlene Miller desire to have a more exciting and buoyant life. There is the theme of freedom, curiosity, control and prurience. This story is narrated in the third person by an unidentified narrator and very early on in the story there is an understanding into one of the main themes of the story. Bill and Arlene Miller are characterized as being a “happy couple” but they live their life comparing it to their neighbors, Jim and Harriet Stone. The Stones travel a lot because of Jim’s job and appear to enjoy their lives more than the Millers. The Millers appear to be confined to living their lives around their jobs, it’s like clockwork. There is a sense of freedom in the…show more content…
Bill goes through their cabinets and takes things that are useless to him, like Harriet’s medication. He is comfortable in the Stones’ apartment, even more so than in his own. He drinks their drinks, rummages through their cabinets, smokes their cigarettes, and he even goes as far as dressing up in both Jim and Harriet’s clothes. It is as if he thinks that if he wears their clothes, he is living through their belongings. There are numerous incidents where Bill looks at himself in the mirror while he is wearing Jim’s clothes; it is suspected that Bill may be fanaticizing about being Jim Stone. Bill also tried on Harriet’s undergarments, which symbolizes him wanting to be that close to her. Though certain readers could propose that Bill’s overindulgences are a little extreme, Arlene too has so much curiosity about the Stone’s apartment that she too seems to be unable to get control of herself. Arlene only goes into the Stones apartment once, but she spends over an hour in the apartment and also forgets the whole reason she went to the apartment was to feed their cat and water their plants. Arlene begins her search throughout their apartment and goes straight to their bedroom. Like Bill, Arlene lay in the Stones bed and Bill recognized that she had the white lint from the blanket on the Stones
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