Outward Simplicity and Underlying Symbolism in Raymond Carver’s ‘Gazebo’

In Raymond Carver’s “Gazebo” (1980), the eponymous gazebo seems mundane, irrelevant even. Yet Carver carefully tells us that it is a sign of permanence, of stability: men would come and play music there “years ago, I mean a real long time ago,”¹ and “the paint was gone and there were these weeds growing up over the steps”². Holly yearns for this permanence, which she now sees as unattainable: “I thought we’d be like that too…Dignified. And in a place”³.

The aura of simplicity in Carver’s work has often been interpreted as the typical entropy (a lack of predictability) of postmodern literature. However, in an insightful work⁴, literary critic Daniel Lehman shows that Carver’s stories are in fact heavy with symbolism.

In “Gazebo”, Holly and Duane’s motel is the metaphorical opposite of the gazebo; like the old couple who owned the gazebo, people come to their door, yet the motel is rented and therefore lacks the constancy that Holly craves. And as Holly and Duane’s marriage decays, so does the establishment: “I stopped cleaning the pool. It filled up with green gick so that the guests wouldn’t use it anymore.”⁵

Carver cements this link between the neglected motel and the failing relationship using the ringing phone. “It has been ringing on and off all day,” Duane tells us, “I’d open my eyes...and listen to it ring and wonder what was happening.”⁶

Carver’s himself best describes how a simple story can hold intense symbolic meaning:

It’s possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things…with immense, even startling, power.”⁷