How does the author use repetition in the short story, Why Don’t You Dance?

Carver's "Why Don't You Dance?" is a short story driven by formal and linguistic doubling. These stylistic and narrative elements enact the author's thematic interest in exploring the inescapable nature of love and relationships. The things the characters do, the things they say to one another, and the narration that depicts both, are rich with repetitions. At the start of the story, the reader sees the man pouring himself a drink. The opening line of the narrative reads: "In the kitchen, he poured another drink and looked at the bedroom suite in his front yard" (3). This is not the first drink the man has consumed. By beginning the story with the man having another beverage, the author gestures to a history that exists off the page. The story, therefore, begins with the repetition of an act. The man continues to drink throughout the narrative. Iterations of this line recur, each one gesturing towards the passage of time, and acting as a narrative propellant.

Doubling, or repetition, also appears in the characters' movements through the space, and the things they say to each other. Before the man returns home from the market, the boy sits on the sofa and smokes a cigarette. After the man comes back, he also sits on the sofa with a cigarette. Prior to the man's arrival, the narrator says that "for no good reason, [the boy] switched the reading lamp on" (5). Shortly after sitting on the couch with his smoke, the man reaches "to turn on the floor lamp" (7). In the span of only a few pages, the man and the boy's behaviors appear like replicas of one another. The author does this to illustrate the ways the two individuals, and their circumstances, are similar. The boy's relationship with the girl appears like an earlier version of the man's previous relationship with the absent lover. The author, therefore, seems to suggest that all relationships are in danger of evolving and ending in the same manner. The individual is trapped by the mystery of love, and thus by the way it inevitably fades. Other repetitions that underscore these dynamics include, the repeated flipping of the records, the repeated dances on the driveway, and the repeated number of times the girl tells the story of their night on the lawn.