Comparing Life Experience - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages Upon the meeting of the blind person, all this thoughts get dispelled. Carver ensures the blind man becomes humanized as a human being so the present stereotypes’ get broken. Everyday Use is the short story about a mother, Ms. Johnson and her daughters Dee and Maggie. Maggie got burnt badly by a fire. She still has the scars all over the arms and legs. Dee, her sister is healthy and has no problems. Whereas the world rejected Maggie, Dee was always the favorite. Every day use I about how one’s culture and heritage should become applied daily so as not to forget the traditions. Dee is ashamed of her families’ heritage, and the narrator in the Cathedral is uncomfortable with the blind person presence in their home. From the stories, we are able to see that, those with the problems are not the people with disabilities rather the people treated as superior to the disabled people. In Cathedral, Carver demonstrates that salvation lies in the contacts of humans and the connection. In the introduction of the story, it is evident that the narrator (also the husband) was indeed lonely. He had a poor relationship with his wife as he questioned if he loved her, since he did not want to invite Robert (the blind man) her friend whom she truly cared for. The wife told the narrator; that if he loved her, he would do that for him, and if not, okay (Carver 1). The narrator felt insecure by Robert, especially since she had told Robert about him and they had never met. He also had no close relationships with other people. The narrator is jealous of his wife’s first husband, smokes marijuana daily and is envious of her wife’s friendship with the blind man. Just like in the cathedral, in the short story Everyday Use, Maggie is nervous because of the presence of her sister in the home. According to the author, Maggie is nervous about her sister Dee, because of her burn scars. She feels inferior to her sister because she has had many opportunities that she did not have. Mama says, “Maggie will still be nervous until her sister leaves” (Walker 14). In the narrative, Alice Walker, personifies the different ways of culture and heritage in Dee, the mother, and Maggie. Each one of them has different qualities and philosophies of life. Nevertheless, contrary to the cathedral, Mama and Maggie are both proud and happy of her life. Mama is happy of the life she is living. Dee, on the other hand, is like the narrator in the Cathedral; she is not happy and thinks that she is in control of her life. She believes in her own self and does not to get associated with her sister and mother. The mother explains how she always wanted the best things and how she always got what she wanted. The narrator writes, “At sixteen, she had her own style and knew what style was” (Walker 20). This gets seen in the story when she wants the churn top and the dasher and also the old quilts that the mother had promised to give Maggie. Maggie, on the other hand, has accepted life as it is and lives in the uneducated world with happiness in her heart and not material possessions. In the short story, the only names mentioned were of Robert’s wife who died (Beulah) and Robert. The narrator refers to himself as I and is not associated with a name together with the wife. This is dehumanizing to both the husband and wife. The husband feels that he gets stuck in ...Download file to see next pagesRead More