This is a moment where the boy wanted support and mutual concern from his brother who obviously should care but doesn't and the boy feels powerless in trying to help at all. He feels that he can't do anything to help but depends on George to help but since he doesn't the boy is completely powerless. Now this moment isn't too significant until the end of the story when he comes back home from fishing. He has caught a big fish and is excited to show his father the fish. But they are arguing again, he tries to how the fish he is so proud of, but his parents don't care at all and tell him to throw it away. He just stood there with half the fish in his hands. At that moment he was overwhelmed. His parent's approval and love mean so much to him, but they are arguing constantly and he catches this huge fish that he thinks will make his father so proud of him, but they just shun him away. He can't handle this experience and he just stands there. This is generally how a Carver story would end, with an encounter of a situation that wreaks the character for a second.
Johnson on the other hand, in "Jesus" Son", looks at the separation of reality and super reality. All throughout the book there are descriptions of scenes that seem almost heavenly. Scenes of dreary places that still have these wonderful features. In "Car Crash" around the end after the car crash a woman finds out her husband is dead and she is terrified from hearing this but it is described like it is so glorious:.
The doctor took her into a room with a desk at the end of the hall, and under the closed door was a slab of radiated as if, by some stupendous process, diamonds were being incinerated there. What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagine an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere. .
The situation was horrible in this scene, but the main character saw through this and experienced this wonderful occurrence.
