A single day can completely change a person's life. Every opportunity taken brings people closer to their hidden talents, gifts with the ability to improve their reality. But, fear of the unknown often prevents people from discovering their gifts. Time makes them cynical, and their talents go unheeded. However, those who continue to chase their dreams may experience the same transformation Raymond Carver did after a single creative writing class. The unemployed twenty-year-old father of two children, with a volatile marriage and too many obligations for his age, found something that helped him escape from reality. Poetry quickly became his favorite companion. Carver, a man initially without hope, became one of the best American writers of all time, the American Chekhov. Carver's works reflect many hardships he experienced during his lifetime. Using his powerful tools, short sentences and sparse dialogues, he depicts his problems with alcohol, poverty, and divorce, by writing about desperate, common people trying to find, "the new place.".
Sometimes hardships people face make them understand other people's problems and sympathize with them. If that person is a writer, like Carver, main characters may reflect the authors' struggle, facing the same situations and making the same mistakes the author once did. Carver's unique writing, simple but powerful, often conceals its messages, quietly portraying the secret relationship between characters, readers, and the writer himself. Poetry was Carver's obsession, his sanctuary, his escape from the daily trials of the young father lacking the money necessary to raise a family. After many years as an alcoholic, who, "began to drink heavily after [he] realized that the things [he'd] wanted most in life for [himself] and his writing, and [his] wife and children, were simply not going to happen," (Interview with Raymond Carver) Carver shifts his addiction to writing, and prioritizes the love of writing over everything else.
