Graham Greene, a Canadian actor, once said, “Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.” Carver brings this quote into light, when he describes the outcome of an argument that a couple has. Carver, the author of “Popular Mechanics,” uses imagery, symbolism, and voice to convey that humanity is inherently bad, violent, evil and in times of darkness. One can easily destroy ones own beautiful creations, but in all it’s just a part of human nature.
In “Popular Mechanics,” Carver uses imagery to reveal that one usually doesn’t have light around them, instead one has darkness surrounding them, causing one to do bad things. Carver starts off his story, by describing the scene that’s outside. Caver ends off his description of the scene
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When the man and the women start arguing about the baby, they both “knocked down a flowerpot.” (Caver 124). Flowerpots are usually broken into pieces when knocked from large heights, flower pots usually contain flowers and are kept to show beauty. The flowerpot symbolizes the couples relationship with one another: the couple was trying to put an effort to keep their relationship beautiful, but the relationship ended up falling apart. Using symbolism, Caver implies that one has a tendency to ruin the beauty that one has created oneself. He continues on showing the outcome of the couple’s fight using …show more content…
Humanity is ultimately dark, it’s just we don’t dare to admit it. Humanity is like a ying-yang, it comes with the dark and the light, but we focus on the light in dark times; we always try to hide away the dark truth. Hiding away the darkness, making society seem perfect; humanity is really terrifying, knowing about the darkness that we all try to hide, is even more alarming. We commit genocide, spend more money on war than peace, child abuse, domestic violence, suicide, and more. We created this place in which all this happens, but we don’t accept it, we shun it. Keeping it locked up, we pretend it doesn’t happen. We don’t acknowledge any of this. We choose to wear rose-colored glasses, rather than seeing the truth of it
If expanded further, this metaphor can be applied to the entire human experience. All humanity is like a traveler driving through the dark. At varying junctions in our experiences we are, inevitably, both the discoverers and perpetrators of atrocities; the confusion surrounding our responses to theses junctions is the darkness we travel through.
Every 60 seconds a person is murdered in the U.S. Yearly there are over 12,000 gun deaths in the United States. The amount of violence in our country is a result of how cruel people can be to each other and the lack of humanity we have as human beings. In the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding there are British boys that were on their way home but they crashed and now have to endure through the challenges the island they are on gives them. The book is representing humanity’s inner nature and shows the reader how different human actions are when bad things happen. A philosopher named John Locke believed that people are born with a blank slate and something bad must happen first in order for someone to be evil. Human nature is usually good but things can always change. The nature of humanity is inherently good because something must happen in order for people to be evil. If you were friends with somebody, something must happen between you two in order for you to hate them.
Upon reading Raymond Carver's short story of the Cathedral one will notice the literary devices used in the short story. When analyzing the story completely, one then understands the themes, motifs, metaphors, and the overall point of the piece. This leaves the reader with an appreciation of the story and a feeling of complete satisfaction.
The narrator is quite obviously the character that Carver wants us to see as figuratively "blind." There is a stark contrast in the blind man and the husband from the beginning. The story starts out as the young husband anticipates the arrival of his wife's friend. The reader can sense his disgust and unwillingness to understand what it is like to be blind. He worries only for himself and how uncomfortable he will be in the situation. Mental emphasis is placed on the physical aspects of things and how the narrator cannot understand how the blind man could have a wife and never see her. "She could, if she wanted, wear green eye-shadow around one eye, a straight pin in her nostril, yellow slacks and purple shoes, no matter" (214).
The point of view from the narrators perspective, highlights how self-absorbed and narrow-minded he is. “They’d married, lived and worked together, slept together—had sex, sure—and then the blind man had to bury her. All this without his having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked like. It was beyond my understanding” (Carver...
Through the experience of the young character, Bobby, the short story Catapult by J. A McLeod is a good example in which characters in texts are constructed to represent the best and worst qualities in human nature. In this short story, Bobby is constructed to convey just how easily we are able to destroy our innocence and to represent some of the uglier qualities in human nature, like how we crave power, are greedy and how easily we are able to kill if given the power paired with a lapse in judgement. It shows how we would rather pin the blame on something innocent rather than accept our faults and also suggests that our lack of judgement could be our downfall. At the same
Instead of basing his judgement on character the narrator decided to see Robert as a blind man that was trying to have an affair with his wife. Carver uses this story “Cathedral” to open the readers eyes and send the profound message of intolerance and ignorance and how one can be blind mentally not physically. The narrator is so hostile to the idea of a visit from Robert because he is blinded by jealousy, anger, and
Constantly throughout the short story, Robert defies the narrator’s original portrayal of what he believes is a stereotypical blind man. “He also had a full beard. But he didn’t use a cane and he didn’t wear dark glasses. I’d always thought dark glasses were a must for the blind” (Carver 36). Robert also starts to change the narrator’s perception of blind people not only physically but emotionally. In an act of thoughtful accommodation, the narrator begins to describe to Robert the cathedrals on the television when the speaker of the program halts the commentary. Robert starts to slightly and gradually change the perspective that the narrator sees blind people from until the conclusion of the story when Robert shines a light on the
Throughout its entirety, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness utilizes many contrasts and paradoxes in an attempt to teach readers about the complexities of both human nature and the world. Some are more easily distinguishable, such as the comparison between civilized and uncivilized people, and some are more difficult to identify, like the usage of vagueness and clarity to contrast each other. One of the most prominent inversions contradicts the typical views of light and dark. While typically light is imagined to expose the truth and darkness to conceal it, Conrad creates a paradox in which darkness displays the truth and light blinds us from it.
Oscar Wilde, an acclaimed Irish Poet, novelist, dramatist and critic once aptly commented, “Men become old, but they never become good”. The philosophical aspect of this quote relies on the basis that human beings are inherently malevolent. Through his pessimistic perspective, Wilde clearly captures the ill-disposed mindset of mankind. Moreover, there are various deductive arguments that discredit the optimistic depiction of human nature. One of the prime examples can be found in Kurt Vonnegut’s literature. In Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat's Cradle, through the illustration of his characters, the author symbolizes the four elements of human fallibility.
In Short Cuts, by Raymond Carver, characters experience trials and problems in their lives, whether extreme such as in " A Small, Good Thing" and "Lemonade" or nominal such as in " Vitamins". They all seem to depict these struggles as uphill battles which the characters cannot and mostly do not overcome. The characters throughout Carver's "Short Cuts" struggle through their lives in private desperation, often to ultimately realize that they are bound to the truth of who they really are, which is shown in the story "Neighbors."
Carver’s purpose of having the narrator of the short story use imagery allows for the reader to be able to understand each and every moment he lives while explaining the blind man’s, Robert, visit to his home. In Cathedral, the narrator tells the story very detailed and descriptive. For instance, when the narrator describes his wife’s arrival with Robert, “I saw my wife laughing as she parked the car. I saw her get out of the car and shut the door…She went around to the other side of the car to where the blind man was already starting to get out…he was wearing a full beard!” Here, the author makes the narrator describe the scene and details it as if he is describing it to a blind person. Most of the short story uses imagery which makes clear images in the reader’s mind to unders...
“One thing you learn when you’ve lived as long as I have - people aren’t all good, and people aren’t all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives.” This quote, spoken by Neal Shusterman, is exemplified so much throughout daily life. Whether the difference between the dark and light be good and evil or simply private and public, it’s inevitable to have two sides as a human being. Also, in the works of fiction Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, and The Book Thief written by Marcus Zusak, many characters follow this theory that as human beings, there are two sides that exist in a person. Many people would like to contradict this theory however, saying that people are good natured and only possess one side. Realistically though, this is false. In the world of literature, many texts depict duality among people and support Robert Stevenson’s statement that duality exists in everyone.
A short story is often made of 6 elements which are the point of view, character, setting, style, theme, and plot. In the short story “Popular Mechanics”, Raymond Carver mainly uses the plot to deliver his story. Although the story is told from a third-person point of view; the narrator is very objective and does reveal any thoughts or feelings of the characters. The story is told mainly through the dialogue of the two characters; Carver doesn’t fully describe the characters which keep them remain static and flat throughout the story. He also doesn’t give us many details of the setting either, but a house or an apartment somewhere. Although, Carver mainly uses plot in his story; he successfully deliver the story by fully using all the elements
Heart of Darkness is a story in which racism presents itself so deliberately that, for many, the dilemma of race must be tackled before anything else in the book may be dealt with. Conrad used derogatory, outdated and offensive terminology to devaluate people’s color as savages. This use of language disturbs many readers who read this book. Although Conrad uses racist language in this book, it doesn’t mean that he is really racist. When we look at the language, we are just looking at the very surface of the story.