“A Small, Good Thing” is a story that focuses on the joy of birth and the tragedy of death: Ann and Howard’s son, Scotty, is hit by a car on his eighth birthday, and he dies suddenly after a period of unconsciousness. Ann had ordered a birthday cake for her son the day before, and throughout the story the parents receive calls from the baker about picking up the cake—painful and constant reminders that what was supposed to be a day of celebration has instead become a day of mourning. The contrast of birth and death in the story show that joy and tragedy are both an inevitable part of life that can strike at any time, and that there’s very little way to control or avoid either.
Prior to their son’s sudden death, the couple lived an easy, happy life, which they come to realize was just a matter of luck. As Ann orders her son’s birthday cake in the story’s opening scene, she feels glad to be in “this special time of cakes and birthday parties.” The plural of “cakes and birthday parties” suggests that Ann isn’t just looking forward to her son’s birthday the following day—she’s excited about the stage of life her son is in, in which he attends birthday parties and has his own. That Ann characterizes this stage of life as one of lighthearted celebration (and particularly the celebration of life) suggests that it’s been a joyful, exciting time for the whole family. Ann’s husband, Howard, also emphasizes that their life has been idyllic until now. After his son’s accident, Howard thinks about how he’d been “happy and, so far, lucky […] So far, he had kept away from […] those forces he knew existed and that could cripple or bring down a man if the luck went bad, if things suddenly turned.” Howard frames tragedy as a reality he always knew about in the back of his mind but never had to grapple with personally. Now that “things [have] suddenly turned” in his own life, though, he has a firsthand understanding that life is indeed fickle and fleeting. Just as he couldn’t control his son’s tragic accident—it was the result of “the luck [going] bad”—he didn’t control his previously happy circumstances, either.
The couple also comes to terms with the idea that, like happiness, tragedy is arbitrary and uncontrollable—they can’t undo it, nor can they do much to improve the outcome. Scotty is killed in a random hit-and-run car accident while he’s walking to school, which harks back to Howard’s suggestion that life can “cripple or bring down a man.” At this point in the story, it’s unclear if the accident will leave Scotty literally “cripple[d]” or will “bring [him] down” by killing him, but tragedy nevertheless descends unexpectedly and irreversibly. While Scotty is in the hospital, Ann meets a couple in the waiting room whose son has also endured a tragic, meaningless accident. The boy, Franklin, was attacked during a fight at a party, but he hadn’t been participating in the fight, only watching. Like Scotty, Franklin is suddenly and needlessly pulled into a random, tragic accident and eventually dies in the hospital. The parallelism between the two boys’ fates emphasizes that tragedy can strike unexpectedly and for no real reason. In addition, neither Scotty’s nor Franklin’s parents are able to save their sons. Both families stake out in the hospital, as if going home to rest would somehow negatively affect their sons’ recovery. But waiting around with bated breath for news of their sons doesn’t help, as both boys die in the hospital. And while the hospital staff does actively work to save the boys, even they are powerless in the end. The story suggests that while it’s a parent’s job to protect and care for their kids, and it’s a healthcare worker’s job to do the same for their patients, neither can have that kind of full control over their circumstances.
Birth and death are contrasted throughout the story, just like joy and tragedy: the sadness of Scotty’s death is bookended by moments of happiness, like his birthday, which speaks to the idea that life is a combination of both. When the doctor brings Ann and Howard into a hospital room after Scotty’s death, a doctor in a “green delivery room outfit” is also in the room. His uniform draws attention to the fact that births were occurring in the hospital while Scotty was dying—and that Scotty himself was born on the day of the accident, eight years before. The simultaneous unfolding of both birth and death in the hospital is like a microcosm of life itself. There are moments of joy, represented by births, and tragedies, like illnesses and death, happening at any given moment, and humans can only do so much to stave off or control birth and death. At the end of the story, the baker opens up to Ann and Howard about his own experience with life and death, joy and tragedy. As a baker, his job is to help people celebrate these different life events—like weddings and birthdays—with his cakes, while simultaneously grieving his own childlessness and loneliness. Just like how his “ovens [are] endlessly full and endlessly empty” as he works through the orders each day, his life as a baker reflects the idea that life is a combination of life and death, fullness and emptiness, joy and tragedy.
At the end of the story, the baker shares food with the grieving couple and tells them that “eating is a small, good thing in a time like this.” This small but significant exchange embodies the story’s core idea that life is a constant, uncontrollable ebb and flow of joy and tragedy. Both the couple and the baker are knee-deep in their own grief, but they nevertheless experience a moment of joy in connecting with one another and experiencing a small, simple pleasure.
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Joy and Tragedy Quotes in A Small, Good Thing
She was a mother and thirty-three years old, and it seemed to her that everyone, especially someone the baker’s age—a man old enough to be her father—must have children who’d gone through this special time of cakes and birthday parties. There must be that between them, she thought. But he was abrupt with her—not rude, just abrupt. She gave up trying to make friends with him.
Until now, his life had gone smoothly and to his satisfaction—college, marriage, another year of college for the advanced degree in business, a junior partnership in an investment firm. Fatherhood. He was happy and, so far, lucky—he knew that. His parents were still living, his brothers and his sister were established, his friends from college had gone out to take their places in the world. So far, he had kept away from any real harm, from those forces he knew existed and that could cripple or bring down a man if the luck went bad, if things suddenly turned.
“He’s all right,” the doctor said. “Nothing to shout about, he could be better, I think. But he’s all right. Still, I wish he’d wake up. He should wake up pretty soon.” The doctor looked at the boy again. “We’ll know some more in a couple of hours, after the results of a few more tests are in. But he’s all right, believe me, except for the hairline fracture of the skull. He does have that.”
They both stared out at the parking lot. They didn’t say anything. But they seemed to feel each other’s insides now, as though the worry had made them transparent in a perfectly natural way.
“They said they’re going to take him down and run more tests on him, Ann. They think they’re going to operate, honey. Honey, they are going to operate. They can’t figure out why he won’t wake up. It’s more than just shock or concussion, they know that much now. It’s in his skull, the fracture, it has something, something to do with that, they think. So they’re going to operate. I tried to call you, but I guess you’d already left the house.”
Then he began to talk. They listened carefully. Although they were tired and in anguish, they listened to what the baker had to say. They nodded when the baker began to speak of loneliness, and of the sense of doubt and limitation that had come to him in his middle years. He told them what it was like to be childless all these years. To repeat the days with the ovens endlessly full and endlessly empty. The party food, the celebrations he’d worked over. Icing knuckle-deep. The tiny wedding couples stuck into cakes. Hundreds of them, no, thousands by now. Birthdays. Just imagine all those candles burning.
