Vern

Vern is the narrator’s life partner and  a secondary character in Raymond Carver’s short story “The Idea.”

There is no indication of Vern’s age or occupation. After he takes a shower, Vern wears a robe over his flannelled pajamas (p. 66, l. 7). He smells of toilet water, and his hair is wet and slicked down over the back of his head (p. 66, ll. 7-8).

Vern is a heavy smoker. He smokes throughout the story, and the narrator states that he even wakes up from his sleep to smoke: “Vern smokes all the time; there’s no stopping him. He even sleeps with an ashtray three inches from his head. At night I'm awake and he wakes up and smokes” (p. 64, ll. 34-36). It is possible that this extreme habit has affected his health, as he is often described as clearing his throat (p. 64, ll. 30-31, p. 65, l. 3) or coughing (p. 65, l. 17). He seems to have...