(What Do You Do When People Say You’re Inspiring?, 2021)
“Then I said, ‘I’m glad for the company’. And I guess I was. Every night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep. My wife and I hardly ever went to bed at the same time. When I did go to sleep, I had these dreams. Sometimes I’d wake up from one of them, my heart going crazy.”
When reading Raymond Carver’s short story the Cathedral, I took 1 key message from it. This story has reiterated the fact that no matter who you are or what has happened to you, you’re in charge of your own destiny. In this short story, there are two men: a blind man and a man with no physical disabilities (the narrator). Although the blind man is clearly disadvantaged, he has created a full, successful life for himself. He found true love, made friends, and lived through many life-altering experiences. In comparison, the narrator has no physical disabilities but is pessimistic, unfriendly, and unhappy. Since he has this mindset, we learn that he doesn’t enjoy his monotonous life and doesn’t have any true friends. He has lived like this for years, and has never chosen to take matters into his own hands and change his life. After meeting the blind man and drawing a cathedral together, the narrator comes to the realization that things in his life are better than they seem, and he just needs a new perspective. This consciousness is key to proving that each individual decides how they are going to look at and live their lives.
“Then I said, ‘I’m glad for the company’. And I guess I was. Every night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I
(Finally Taking Your Life Into Your Own Hands – Lakehouse, 2015)
could before I fell asleep. My wife and I hardly ever went to bed at the same time. When I did go to sleep, I had these dreams. Sometimes I’d wake up from one of them, my heart going crazy.” This quote, spoken by the narrator, shows that first shift in the narrator’s perspective. Before this, he came across as arrogant, and it was clear he thought of himself better than the blind man just because of his disability. However, in this quote he discovered how he has very limited connections with the people around him and how he is not as happy with his monotonous life as he thought he was beforehand. This quote shows his epiphany where he stops living with his unhappy life and begins to consider how he could change it for the better. In this quote, he says he and his wife hardly ever go to bed at the same time. This shows how they aren’t very connected, and don’t have a very good relationship with each other. Your significant other is supposed to be one that you are closest with, and if he hardly ever speaks to his wife, he probably doesn’t have very many other true friendships or relationships around him.
This short story is written with small sentences and easy to read language, but that doesn’t mean Carver didn’t think about his word choices. For example, in the quote I chose, the word dreams is a metaphor for him being haunted by what he doesn’t have, and shows that the things he really wants feel far out of reach. In addition, this quote shows the reader him longing for company which he doesn’t usually have, per fault of him. Carver elected to take out any confusing language as he decided that the goal of this short story was to teach people a lesson, and I think he did an extraordinary job at doing so.
Although there were many key shifts in the narrator’s perspective in this short story, I chose this one as I thought it best portrayed the fact that the narrator began to take matters into his own hands. Throughout the story, the narrator’s snide remarks were prominent, but after he came to this new-found realization, he slowly began to respect the blind man more, and ultimately respect himself more as well.
