Raymond Nasher

cannot stand his current job. He smokes and drinks to cope with what he feels are his life’s disappointments, completely detaching himself from reality. In his essay “The Calm” Mark A. R. Facknitz discusses how complex and detailed the characters in Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral” really are. “Carver’s penetration of characters is honest and fast. But they compose a diminished race – alcoholics, obsessives, drifters, and other losers who are thoroughly thrashed by life in the first…

having their own flaws. In both Cathedral, by Raymond Carver, and A Good Man Is Hard To Find, by Flannery O’Connor, the central characters are forced to deal with circumstances that change their beliefs about themselves and others. The authenticity of these two stories show you the dangers of ignorance and how you should live life the first time around. In Cathedral, there are two main characters. There is the husband, and a blind man named Robert. Raymond Carver details two polarizing…

books and films we watch. They tend to be strong, moral and exciting characters that men look up to. Therefore, these texts carry a lot of weight in terms of the reflection of society and the male perspective on life. Using the novel The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and the film High Noon directed by Fred Zinnemann, this paper will argue that there are certainly element within the texts that both support and counter the claim that the pervasive American male fantasy is life without women.give…

The crime drama ‘Heat’ (Mann) tells the story of a criminal, Neil, and a cop, Vincent. One is content, calm, and has a budding love interest. The other is unhappy, brash, and is at the end of his third marriage. In any other movie, the first description would characterize Vincent and the second would represent Neil. ‘Heat’ flips these roles and makes the criminal behave like a cop and the cop act criminal. Michael Mann, the director of ‘Heat’, chooses to portray these characters as opposites to…

At the end of Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”, The narrator and Robert sit down to draw a cathedral of their own. To us this may seem like nothing, but within the story, it’s has large significance. Throughout this story we are made to feel like the narrator is just a rude and judgmental kind of guy. At each twist and turn in the story he is always there to add a harsh comment, usually towards his wife’s blind friend. One specific time can be noticed during a conversation with his wife about the…

Blindness and disability is a strong theme in literature. Raymond Carver penned the 1983 short story Cathedral in an anthology of the same name. The story centers on an unnamed narrator, who has a strong sense of dislike towards a blind friend of his wife’s. Throughout the visit of Robert, the blind man, the narrator learns more about himself and passes on a message of tolerance and understanding to the reader. Carver’s work was later published in Best American Short Stories, 1982. The majority…

“Fat” by Raymond Carver is the first short story in a collection called Will You Please Be Quiet, Please. Carver intrigued me because of his unique style of writing and captivated me from the first short story I read. This short story is a conversation between the narrator and her friend Rita, as she serves a fat man in the diner where they both work. The story, whilst seemingly is a ‘slice of life’ everyday mundane observation, slowly becomes more uncomfortable and unsettles dark secrets that…

The use of marijuana is introduced in the short story, we experience how the two characters interact and open up to each other. While smoking the joint together, the narrator is amazed by the fact that even blind men can smoke, “like he’d been doing it since he was nine years of age” (Carver 45). The narrator eventually comes to the conclusion that visual impairment does not prevent a man to be the same as him but rather everything is somehow similar. However, he raises that his better half’s…

“Cathedral” is a story about a man’s changing views, based on a growing and learning experience that he faces throughout the story. The man’s speech on his wife about her initial contact with the blind man begins passively: her job to work for the man is simply a job, nothing more. The narrator grows a rapid jealousy and resentment, following the event where his wife allowed the blind man to touch her face, although his initial reaction to reading the poem about the event is blank and unmoving,…

R.K.Narayan’s ‘Talkative Man’-A Mini Novel of Many Characters: A Study A. Phaniraja Kumar Abstract: Talkative Man is a short novel based on a man’s life in his struggle to make his reputation as a renowned journalist(TM) in the well-known modern town of Malgudi. It also describes the charisma of born flirt Dr. Rann and his Home Guard wife, Sarasa. In this novel R.K.Narayan focuses on characters rather than incidents. It is an entertaining read with humorous moments juxtaposed…