english 225 film
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discussion_2_week2_eng125.docx
Discussion 2 In the stories you have read in Chapters 4-7, you have been introduced to several kinds of characters. Using a story that is different than the one you analyzed in the Literary Techniques and Their Connection to Conflict in Literature discussion, describe a character you sympathize with by answering the following questions:
· Why did this character interest you? What choices does the character make, and how do the choices (or the result of the choices) contribute to the theme of the story?
· What kind of conflict (internal/external) did this character encounter, and how did he/she handle it?
· How does the setting contribute to the character’s development?
· How does the setting contribute to the character’s experience and give the story more meaning?
As you consider these questions and answer them, incorporate readings found in Chapters 4-7 to help illustrate the points you make. Your initial post should be at least 200 words in length. The minimum word count does not include references.
Themes
Prejudice and Ignorance
In this
short story, Carver uses the main character‟s skeptical tone and first
person point of view in order to express that ignorance and prejudice is caused by wrong suppositions and lack of knowledge that can be overcome with treating the other with equality. This use helps the reader to experience what the narrator is going through, every thought process and reasoning. This allows the reader to witness how it is possible for a person to end up with such prejudice conclusions. Carver also allows an access
into the narrator‟s
mind as his conversation with the blind man alone does not reveal his bias towards the blind man.
The narrator‟s
apparently judgmental and doubtful tone lays emphasis on his expectations about the blind man as well as setting a difficult attitude once the blind man and the narrator finally meet (Paul Yao, 2008). The
narrator‟s perspective about “the blind” simultaneously conveys his
ignorance and builds
the story‟s dramatic tension, which appears to be resolved when knowledge is exchanged at the story‟s end. At that point,
Robert and the narrator together
draw a cathedral and satisfy Robert‟s
curiosity about what exactly a cathedral is. With this effort, the narrator appears to experience an internal change as he realizes the limitations of his viewpoint (Eve Wiederhood). Finally, Robert persuades the narrator to close his eyes and practice things as the blind do. Only then does the narrator feel free and pleasure. In this point, the author suggests that the mind is the most important aspect in the way we see things, and that the judgments we make are often based on what our minds create instead of on what is really there (Allan Simes, 2008).
Versions of Reality
All the three characters find insight and meaning in their experiences through poetry, drawing, and storytelling. In relation to the narrator, his wife writes a couple of poems every year to infer to events that were significant in her life, including the time Robert touched her face. The narrator dislikes the poems but confesses that he might not understand them. The narrator achieves insight into his own life when he draws a picture of a cathedral with Robert, realizing for the first time that looking inward is a means to gain better knowledge and a deeper understanding of himself. On the other hand, Robert, too, gets insight from the drawing (Sparknotes Editors). Furthermore, the story looks at the unsteady nature of reality. For example, the unnamed narrator's reality, or his vision of Robert, a blind man, is based on images from the movies about blind people, his wife's descriptions, and Robert's voice on tape. Once the narrator meets Robert for the first time, the reality of Robert, for the narrator, changes. This reality goes on to change throughout the night as they get to know each other better. The story's conclusion suggests that by the end of the night, the narrator has learned that nothing was fairly as he
believed. His experience with Robert, and trying to experience the world from Robert's viewpoint, opens up an entire new way of looking at the world (Shmoop Editorial Team). Robert possesses the physical blindness over seeing, but he has the gift of knowing and understanding people over the narrator's ignorance. He sees through the ignorance of the narrator and looks beyond it to help the young man understand the blind man's own world and the reality he lives in. Despite their world of differences, both the young man and the old man are able to see each other's point of view. The blind man is able to feel how a cathedral looks like in the eyes of the narrator, and the narrator feels the struggle of trying to realize what other people can see. The blindness that separates the narrator from Robert in the beginning of the story brings them together in the end and both observe the same real world (Yahoo Contributors Network, 2005).
Conclusion
In this paper we attempted to analyze the main elements of short story in Carver's renowned short story
Cathedral
. It is the final story in Carver's collection
Cathedral
published in 1983.
Cathedral
was included in Best American Short Stories, 1982. Raymond Carver as some critics referred to, is one of the most dominant American short-story writer and poet in the second half of 20
th
century, a major force in the renewal of the short story in the 1980s
.
The story goes around three characters set in the narrator's home in one evening. It is mainly about the prejudice and ignorance of the narrator about the real world he is living in. the blind man eventually despite his physical disability gives him insight of the freedom and release to feel and see things properly. The story is enriched with ironical moments, and it is full of images which help the reader to experience what the first person, narrator undergoes. As a result, Carver gives interesting lessons to the us how can we find beauty and free ourselves from prejudgments and see the real world with our minds, not only our eyes. Thus, it was interesting for me to analyze and discuss those literary characteristics we mentioned in this essay
Characters
The Narrator
As we observe the way the narrator sees and understands the world around, we infer some character traits: his attitude is insecure, arrogant, and rude, out of touch, unaffected, hesitant, lacking self-awareness. There are many examples in the story where this is proved. The narrator deceives himself. His own words implicate him, revealing how biased, ignorant, and insensitive he is. Those same words also reveal how lonely, distant and in need of human contact he is (James Esch, 2008) The narrator is also jealous of the men from
his wife‟s past and doesn‟t want Robert to visit,
but he eventually joins him when they draw a cathedral together. While his eyes are closed, the narrator has an epiphany after finishing the drawing (Sparknotes Editors). The narrator could not to see beyond the physicality of a relationship and were not able to apprehend how Robert could have ever esteemed Beulah. Equally
with his wife‟s poem, the narrator doesn‟t understand it, again the idea
that he is in some ways outcast, not fully understanding its meaning (Dermut Mcmanus, 2013). The narrator is distant from his wife and seems very alone and negative. He is unsympathetic to his wife and the blind man. It is almost as if the narrator is hostile towards the relationship his wife and the blind man have. This sets the tone of the piece as negative and desperate and creates a basis for the fundamental ambiguities and paradoxes in the story (Mary Jane, 2010).
Narrator's Wife
An unnamed woman who invites Robert to their home. The wife has kept in touch with Robert since they met ten years ago, exchanging audiotapes with him and telling him everything about her life. Before she married the narrator,
she‟d been married to a military office
r and was so unhappy that she tried to kill herself (Sparknotes Editors). The wife is the sort of woman who needs to
express herself. Robert‟s friendship lets her to do that. She tries to share her
opinions and whatever news she has concerning Robert with her husband. For instance, she asks her husband if he wants to hear the latest tape from
Robert. The narrator agrees unwillingly. Also, she is a woman who needs a sense of connection. She tells Robert that she was unhappy being part of her
first husband‟s
"military-industrial thing." She divorced her first husband despite her love for him, because she was exhausted of moving and was depressed with losing the people she cared about. Moreover, she is a
sensitive woman. She feels Robert‟s grief
when he loses his wife and is angry
when the narrator ridicules Robert‟s dead wife (Charmaine R. Berina
After shedding his inhibitions through liquor and marijuana, and feeling somewhat invisible in the presence of his sightless house guest, the narrator confesses that he does not believe in religion or anything else. “Sometimes it’s hard,” he says, “You know what I’m saying?” Robert replies: “Sure, I do.” Although the narrator knows that cathedrals are products of a great religious faith that existed during the Middle Ages, he confesses that “cathedrals don’t mean anything special to me.”
The cathedral that the narrator and Robert draw on the side of a shopping bag might be seen as symbolizing the vestiges of religious faith in the Western world. It is significant that the men copy a cathedral seen through the modern medium of television, because science and technology have been particularly responsible in undermining traditional religious faith since the Middle Ages.
The joint artistic creation of these late twentieth century men represents their pathetic wish for a spiritual life that is an unavoidable part of their humanity. These hapless strangers—one a man who hates his job, drinks too much, has no friends, and seems on the verge of divorce, the other a blind widower, a former Amway distributor with a bleak future—come together momentarily because of their common yearning for a more fulfilling and spiritually more meaningful life. The epiphany described in this story is of the smallest possible kind—a sort of “mini-epiphany” appropriate to a minimalistic story. The narrator concludes with the ambiguous understatement of an inarticulate man: “It’s really something.”
Themes
It is interesting to note the kind of man the narrator is. He is resentful of the platonic relationship his wife has with a man she worked with in the past. Having lost his wife, he is traveling; they have planned to have him stay one night before moving on. If the narrator isn't already being difficult about their impending visitor, the fact that Robert is blind does not make things easier. In truth, the narrator acts very much like a child, unhappy about specific aspects of the impending visiting; specifically, he is prejudiced about Robert being blind:
I wasn't enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed.
The speaker makes it clear that he is not happy about Robert coming; without knowing him, the narrator draws unfair conclusions about the man, and his wife makes it clear that he had better behave himself while Robert is visiting them:
"If you love me," she said, "you can do this for me. If you don't love me, okay. But if you had a friend, any friend, and the friend came to visit, I'd make him feel comfortable."
When Robert arrives, things are a little awkward, but perhaps no more than any people meeting for the first time in a social setting. The narrator's wife has pointed out to him that he has no friends. He seems comfortable in his own element, without strangers interfering with his isolation. However, as the night progresses the two men talk and eventually "watch" television, as the narrator tries to describe with words what a cathedral "looks" like. Robert suggests that if the speaker will get a large piece of paper and a pen, while the narrator draws Robert can follow the movement of his hand and mentally envision the shape of the building.
He found my hand, the hand with the pen. He closed his hand over my hand. "Go ahead, bub, draw," he said. "Draw. You'll see. I'll follow along with you. It'll be okay. Just begin now like I'm telling you. You'll see. Draw," the blind man said.
The key to the theme is in Robert's comment: "You'll see." The narrator believes that "seeing" is something he can do that Robert cannot. He thinks that Robert as a man of limitations, but the truth is that the narrator is the blind one: unable to see the value of the world and the people around them because he bases his perceptions on what can be seen. This exercise with Robert opens the narrator's mind to how blind he really is, but the reader is left with the impression that the speaker has been changed by understanding how to see as Robert does (a paradoxical development). The narrator draws with his eyes closed:
"Keep them that way," [Robert] said. He said, "Don't stop now. Draw."
So we kept on with it. His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now.
At the close of the story, the narrator is not interested in seeing with his eyes open, but continues to see the world with his eyes shut. The theme could be that things are not always what they seem, or one cannot know the world simply by looking at it: one must look beyond the surface.
charaters
The characters in the Cathedral stories undergo the same anguish and agony as the characters in previous stories. Their prospects for the future, however, are better, largely due to their increased ability to sympathize, empathize, understand, and love. Their emotional resources have grown appreciably. The strongest examples can be drawn from the two best stories in the collection: "Cathedral" and "A Small Good Thing."
In "Cathedral" a blind man visits the narrator and his wife, who had worked for the blind man ten years before. The narrator is unhappy about the visit; he is both self-conscious and jealous. Both feelings recede, however, in the presence of the blind man, particularly in response to his naturalness and geniality. It is not long before the narrator begins to enjoy the blind man's company and becomes worried that he may not be able to visualize a cathedral from a verbal description that the narrator gives him as the two attend to a television show about cathedrals. The narrator's description of the cathedral is inadequate partly because of the blind man's impaired vision, but largely because of the narrator's own blindness to spiritual and human values. In a remarkable moment of imaginative vision, Carver has the blind man hold the narrator's hand as he draws a cathedral. The experience they share involves more than an intellectual comprehension of a cathedral. It evokes a deep, rich joy that transcends the superficial relationship...
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Cathedral by Raymond Carver Characters
The characters in the Cathedral stories undergo the same anguish and agony as the characters in previous stories. Their prospects for the future, however, are better, largely due to their increased ability to sympathize, empathize, understand, and love. Their emotional resources have grown appreciably. The strongest examples can be drawn from the two best stories in the collection: "Cathedral" and "A Small Good Thing."
In "Cathedral" a blind man visits the narrator and his wife, who had worked for the blind man ten years before. The narrator is unhappy about the visit; he is both self-conscious and jealous. Both feelings recede, however, in the presence of the blind man, particularly in response to his naturalness and geniality. It is not long before the narrator begins to enjoy the blind man's company and becomes worried that he may not be able to visualize a cathedral from a verbal description that the narrator gives him as the two attend to a television show about cathedrals. The narrator's description of the cathedral is inadequate partly because of the blind man's impaired vision, but largely because of the narrator's own blindness to spiritual and human values. In a remarkable moment of imaginative vision, Carver has the blind man hold the narrator's hand as he draws a cathedral. The experience they share involves more than an intellectual comprehension of a cathedral. It evokes a deep, rich joy that transcends the superficial relationship...
The unnamed male narrator, called ''Bub'' by Robert, the blind man, is the protagonist of the story. The story unfolds through the narrator's point of view. ‘‘This blind man, an old friend of my wife's, he was on his way to spend the night,’’ announces the narrator conversationally in the first line of the story. The narrator is jealous of his wife's friendship with the blind man. He is unhappy in his work and isolated from others. According to his wife, he has no friends.
The narrator is unhappy about the blind man's visit. He seems to be uncomfortable with the notion of blindness, with his wife's connection to the man, and with his own inability to relate to other human beings.
After an evening of heavy drinking and pot smoking, the narrator turns on the television and begins to describe what he sees to the blind man. When clips of a cathedral appear on the screen, the narrator, ever inarticulate, is unable to describe a cathedral. The blind man teaches the narrator to "see" the cathedral through drawing.
conflict
As enotes.com/cathedral alludes to above is that isolation and loneliness is one theme. Both the narrator and his wife are unable to effectively communicate with one another; however, his wife communicates freely and well with the blind man. The narrator is very resistant to getting to know this man and is resentful of his presence. Conversely, another theme would be hope for personal growth, as the narrator seems to have an epiphany of sorts at the end when he makes ther realization that he can communicate with the blind man and that doing so makes him feel very different and alive in many ways. A conflict arises with the confrontation of two opposing parties. Generally the conflict includes the protagonist pitted against an antagonist, whether it be represented as his conscience, nature, God, society or self.
In "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver, the conflict is man vs self. Robert, an old blind friend of the narrator's wife is coming for a visit. His wife has recently died. The narrator is angry that the man is coming and is hostile toward him. At first it seems that he is jealous of the attention his wife is giving Robert. However, I believe that the conflict is within the narrator, not with Robert. The narrator has certain perceptions about Robert, his wife, how Robert should act, how the narrator should fit into the picture, etc. The problem is his own; but throughout, Robert is very gracious about it all.
Because the conflict is man vs self, interestingly, I find that the antagonist is the narrator—or more specifically, his anger with Robert, which may simply be a manifestation of his frustration with the world around him.
The narrator draws on, and blind before to the experiences of Robert, the narrator also seems to become sighted: he feels something he has never felt before, as he draws and the blind man's hand follows the movement of the narrator's hand. Instead of sitting in his self-imposed "darkness" and fearing or resenting it, the narrator has experienced something life-changing. Robert's "vision," which goes beyond one's eyesight, is symbolic of opening your heart and mind to the world in whatever way it comes to you. Having sight does not guarantee "vision," as seen with the narrator. More than seeing, the narrator is able to better understand Robert's world, which he never could have before. This understanding is a form of enlightenment, "seeing" the world in a new way, as it must be for Robert.x
