Lesson #2: "Cathedral" (356)
Part One. Reading Questions
One. What is the irony of using a blind character in the story as a way of developing one of its major themes? See page 391 where the narrator recounts the blind man burying his wife and how “he had never seen her.” Who’s really blind?
Two. Explain the title. A Cathedral is where miracles happen. The miracle is that a dead man will be resurrected. The dead man is equated with the image of skeletons that occur later in the story during the TV show. Clearly, the narrator is dead and reborn by the story’s end.
Three. How does the narrator reveals himself in the first paragraph? He’s a defensive ignoramus and a man so isolated from the complexity of the human condition that he is a walking corpse. He’s a dead man. Later we find that he’s friendless. His wife says he has no friends. He lives inside himself, a prisoner of his own solipsism, which is fueled in part by fear.
Four. What is foreshadowed in the second paragraph? Robert’s sensitivity, tracing the wife’s face, will be passed on to the narrator at the story’s end.
Five. What is the narrator’s real source of jealousy? Dead people don’t like to see people living life fully. They want everyone to be as dead and miserable as they are. The narrator resents the blind man for living life fully.
Six. What do we know about the narrator’s habits? They’re reductionary. He does the same rituals over and over to close himself from emotion. The TV watching, the fear of silence, the fear of conversation, insomnia, the depression, the smoking dope until he can crash in bed. The blind man represents change, a threat, an interference with his routine. Our routines comfort us, but they also imprison and eventually kill us.
Seven. What is the story’s turning point? Where Robert apologizes for monopolizing the talk with the wife. He shows empathy, something the narrator is lacking. He shows he has this quality, empathy, which evinces Robert’s maturity and gives him the credentials to be trusted as a parent figure for the narrator who is essentially a frightened child. Once that dynamic is established, the miracle can begin.
Eight. What contradiction about maturity do we learn in the story? The adult is relaxed enough to be a child and possess a child’s hunger to learn new things. We see this on page 397 when they’re watching TV. One of life’s contradictions is that we have to be mature enough to be children, to be relaxed enough to let go and let our child explore.
Nine. How do we know the narrator is a scared little kid emotionally? He keeps saying, “I’m not doing so well, am I?” He needs an adult’s approval.
Ten. How does the narrator change at the end of the story? In the beginning he is disaffected. By the end, gets excited, his legs become numb, he’s possessed with a sense of urgency and life purpose. He says at one point, “It was like nothing else in my life up to now.”
Part Two. Disaffected, adjective; Disaffection, noun:
To be disaffected is to be emotionally withdrawn, disengaged with the world, depressed. Disaffection is the condition of having given up on life and in essence being a member of the walking dead.
Part Three. The Causes of Disaffection
1. You lack confidence to engage with others so you withdraw into yourself. Perhaps you were hurt in the past and don’t want to get hurt again, so you avoid people.
2. You get married more for convenience and to shelter you from the world.
3. You become addicted to your routines, which shut out the outside world.
4. You are reflexively hostile to anyone new because they represent a threat to your existence. You hate change.
5. You act like a churlish (grouchy) know-it-all who has all the answers, a person who dismisses everything as a “joke” and “utter nonsense.”
6. You are incapable of listening to others. The only thing you listen to the Cynical Voice constantly grumbling inside your head.
7. You are lethargic in your self-centeredness and numb yourself with various addictions in order to undergo your “slow death.”
8. You teach yourself that there is no hope for change or a better life so you succumb to learned helplessness.
Part Four. Journal Entry
In a paragraph, describe someone you show who has over time become disaffected. (McMahon: talk about the divorced doctor)
One. Reading Questions 1. Explain the essay’s title. Iridescence, something that intoxicates, chimera, metaphor. 2. What evidences the narrator’s empty existence on the first page? The monotony becomes "normal," that is it becomes something the husband and wife become used to. In fact, their life is one of hellish loneliness and depression, yet they're not aware of this fact. To be depressed on not know you're depressed is very dangerous because you do desperate things unconsciously such as pursue chimeras, illusions, projections of your own desires. 3. On page 333, what evidences the narrator’s dysfunctional marriage? The wife feels threatened by a simple dinner. How insular is she? What kind of stagnation are we talking about here? 4. What reasons can we infer that the narrator and his wife don’t want children? Do children force parents into a social world? What else? 5. How does “Feathers” repeat the same themes in “Cathedral”? See page 335. Openness vs. closed system of living. Edenic images similar to the paradise seen from the Cathedral. The Peacock is Otherness like the cathedral. The shimmering Otherness of the peacock is juxtaposed with the pedestrian banal working-class existence of Bud and his wife. 6. How and why does Carver juxtapose the different economic classes in this story? Is he painting Fran as some anal-retentive middle-class suburbanite? See page 342 7. How does Bud’s wish to fix his wife’s teeth repeat themes in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”? Living love vs. thinking about love. 8. What significance is there in having an ugly baby in the story? 349, 350 The baby contrasts the peacock, the reality behind the chimera or ideal. 9. Why did Fran and the narrator have a baby after visiting Bud and his wife? What were the motives? What were the effects of acting on this compulsion? 354, 355 Quick fix? Living vicariously through others? 10. The story’s ending is about what? The reality of banality and the dream of Otherness? Looking to be razzle-dazzled by something that ends up being incurably ordinary? We seem to love an idea about life, marriage, having children, etc., but not the reality of it. Part Two. The Chimera’s Definition, Causes and Effects 1. The chimera is a mirage that draws us in slowly, starting with a burp or a trifle, a tease, an iridescent color that flashes before our eyes or it hits us over the head. In either case, it grows into an obsession and consumes all our energies, thoughts, and dreams. 2. The chimera is based on unconscious longings for class ascent, acceptance, love, popularity, wealth, parental unconditional love (Rosebud), the Chanel Number Five Moment, distinction, proving our doubters that they were wrong. 3. We project our fantasy onto a tabula rasa. 4. Often the chimera is a panacea, a cure-all for all our woes. 5. The Absolute Fallacy (success, fitness, perfection, perfect absolute relationship) 6. The Transcendence Fallacy 7. The Bitch Goddess Fallacy 8. The inevitable despair of the chimera. George Bernard Shaw said there are two great tragedies in life: Not getting what we want and getting it. 9. The cycle of ongoing chimeras, people who never learn and who go in circles, jumping from one chimera to the next. 10. The paradox of the chimera: Chimeras destroy us but they also feed our dreams and in some ways give us strength, drive, motivation, and vitality that we otherwise wouldn’t have. 11. The need for the chimera: We must have stars in the horizon for which he can row our oars. Examples of chimera (have students come up with some): 1. The low-carb diet or the South Beach Diet 2. Yoga 3. A Lexus IS350 4. Viagra 5. Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft 6. Dianobol 7. Having a six-pack 8. Cosmetic surgery, botox or nose job or implants. 9. G-Star Jeans (underground store for special jeans, not the ones you can buy at Nordstrom) 10. the cognoscenti. 11. Becoming famous 12. Angelina Jolie; she’s more than a human. She’s become the great bitch goddess, every man’s dream and every woman’s nightmare. The fantasy of the seductress. 13. Jennifer Aniston, the myth of the good girl, the myth of innocence. 14. Celebrity of all kinds, an autograph, a sighting. 15. Las Vegas 16. Palos Verdes (my neighbors in Torrance are bitter that they haven’t moved to PV yet. Peevers. 17. UCLA 18. iPod 19. Anything sold on the QVC network 20. Marriage. Not all marriages but most are built on the Goody Box chimera. When I want a goody I reach into the goody box. But what happens when all the goodies run out. 21. Me-Time. People who have lots of me-time are miserable. 1. a panacea like a Fad diet 2. a rite of passage like a car representing freedom, independence, and sexual attraction. 3. a form of medication for depression or some deeply acute problem that you bandage with a simple solution; you buy a wardrobe to cover a restlessness and anxiety that haunts you. 4. the myth of romantic absolute, fueled by crappy love songs. 5. a childhood longing, like Christmas lights and Budweiser sign. Part Three. Option #4: The Chimera Compare Mel McGuiness’ chimera from “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” with the chimera that afflicts the couple in “Feathers.” Before you compare the chimeras from the two stories, begin with a one-page introduction in which you describe a chimera that once afflicted you or someone else you know. Journal Entry to Prepare for Chimera Essay Write about a chimera you became obsessed with, how it propelled you into the world of solipsism, and how it crushed you with devastating disappointment. Lesson #3: “Feathers” (332) by Raymond Carver
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