Characters

The main characters of the short story “The Bath” by Raymond Carver are Ann Weiss – Scotty’s mother – and Scotty’s father, who remains unnamed. Scotty’s accident, which takes place on his birthday, affects the two parents, who struggle to cope with their feelings of fear and uncertainty. 

Other characters are Scotty, his friend, the baker, the doctor, and the medical staff who work in the hospital. All the characters in the story illustrate the theme of miscommunication, which will be discussed in a separate section of the study guide.

You can read a full characterization of Ann Weiss and Scotty’s father in the following pages. 

Extract

Here, you can read an extract of our character analyses:

Throughout the story, Ann does not communicate with her husband. Their discussions are brief and suggest that they refrain from talking about the depth of their feelings with each other. Ann answers him curtly, using one or two words, like “glucose” (p. 253, l. 10) or “I know” (p. 253, l. 13), which hint that there might be some tension between them. The tension might be caused by Scotty’s accident, as both Ann and her husband are in shock and are unable to acknowledge what they are feeling. 

Ann eventually listens to her husband and decides to go home “and take a bath and put on something clean” (p. 256, l. 21). Her decision to go home is connected not only to reason – feeding the family dog – but to superstition as well: “After a time she said, ‘Maybe I’ll do it. Maybe if I’m not here watching, he’ll wake up. Maybe it’s because I’m watching that he won’t.’ ” (p. 256, ll. 17-19). This example shows that Ann’s fear and hopelessness make her ignore reason and turn to superstitions for help. 

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