Build up, Build up, But in the end no building.

After reading Carver's fourth short story, The Compartment, I realized that most of his short stories relate to human behavior. In fact, some readers may even be able to relate to his stories. They don't have to necessarily have to go through the same things but they might have experienced the same feelings to those of the main characters.  

I found it very interesting that for most of the story Carver builds it up to the supposed point where the man meets his son. He explains their relationship and how the whole trip was designed to reach that meeting point. But the end is completely the opposite. The man ends up not meeting his son at all, he even decides that it wasn't even worth it and that deep down he feels nothing towards his son other than pity. This is a clear example of how Carver due to his short and direct sentences can completely change the mood of the story in seconds. 

Some questions that I have still have are:

Was the son actually at the train station?

Or was it all a set up? As if to say, did he set up his dad to travel such a longs way and end up in nothing? As revenge?

Also, I want to point out something we mentioned in class. How Carver actually died from his problem with alcoholism. This just made me think about how in one of the previous stories, one of the main characters suffered from alcoholism. There was even a short passage where he describes how the character's wife began to notice certain symptoms that related to the alcoholism problem.