Content Warning: This section of the guide references the graphic murders of women and features ambiguously consensual sex as well as general misogyny.

The story provides no physical description or backstory for its protagonist. Carver does not assign her an age, a race, a socioeconomic status, or any distinctive features. She functions as a wife and mother, and whether she occupies any other roles in society is not clear. Claire’s flat, matter-of-fact manner of narration is characteristic of Carver’s characters. Because Claire narrates the story, however, readers are positioned to sympathize with her, and her unremarkability makes her an “every woman” figure, suggesting that all women are at risk of falling victim to men’s violent advances. Claire’s attendance at the murdered woman’s funeral shows she not only feels compassion for the woman but identifies with her. She too believes she could be prey for a murderer—possibly even her own husband. In this context, her tone, which is at once flat and guarded, implies trauma (though not necessarily more severe trauma than is typical of Gender Norms’ Harmful Effects on Women); she recounts her story emotionlessly, but she also leaves a good deal unsaid.