In the following essay excerpt, May explains how Carver shows "that complex human meaning can be communicated by the simplest of gestures and the most trivial of objects."

Realism in the modern short story from Chekhov to Carver creates metaphorically meaningful reality by focusing on metonymic detail in a highly compressed, highly patterned form. In "Errand," one of the last stories published before his untimely death from cancer, Raymond Carver epitomizes this central short-story characteristic while at the same time paying tribute to his master Chekhov. Like a Chekhov story, "Errand" seems, for the most part, less a unified narrative than a straightforward report of Chekhov's death in a hotel in the resort city of Badenweiler, Switzerland. The story recounts without comment Chekhov's last hours as a doctor visits him in his room and as his wife Olga Knipper stands by helplessly. Knowing that it is hopeless...