A Comparison Of The Quest For Discovery In The Cathedral By Carver

The Quest for Discovery can have multiple meanings and just like these two short stories by Carver they each can have multiple ways to interpret the story. In both stories the path to the answer is not a straight line, but instead, is a path with many obstacles different for each person. The path taken will take time and effort taking you out of your comfort zone. And in some instants there is no “right” answer but just what you believe to be right. In “The Cathedral” follows the narrator and how he deals with having to adjust to being out of his comfort zone, along with “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” the group’s idea of love isn’t the same.

The story of “The Cathedral” follows three characters the narrator, the narrator’s wife,

She was unhappy with her life and tried to commit suicide by swallowing pills. She would keep in touch with the blind man by sending him tapes and the suicide attempt was one of them. He has a jealous tone towards this, he says, “She told him everything, or so it seemed to me” (201). He recalls the time his wife asked him to listen to the latest tape a year ago before this time. He didn’t seem happy to hear his name from the blind man as he said “I heard my own name in the mouth of this stranger” (201). A knock on the door interrupts the couple from the tape, he suggests taking the narrator bowling. She reminds him that his wife, Beulah had just died, he replies by saying “Was his wife Negro?”(202). The narrator’s wife tells him about the blind man’s wife how she was the blind man’s reader after the narrator’s wife stopped working for him, and they eventually got married. After eight years, however, Beulah died from cancer. He felt sorry for Robert for a bit, but then thought about how awful it must have been for Beulah to know that her husband could never even know what she looked like. After staring at Robert’s face analyzing what he

This goes along with what I stated before on “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” how we don’t know everyone’s complete background to why they would think love is to them. In Arthur M. Saltzman’s reading of “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” suggests that “The saving grace of love is its elasticity” (1571). Something I also support since Mel and Terri have both been remarried, undergone hardships like divorce and tragedy. Proving that even though love is not everlasting it is elastic in the way that it is retainable. A.O. Scott’s criticism on “Looking for Raymond Carver” states on page 1576, how the narrator of “Cathedral” has an epiphany after drawing the cathedral for the blind man. The narrator stating “It was like nothing else in my life up to now”. I do agree with what Scott is saying since before in the beginning of the story the narrator didn’t like