In addition to your regular response, answer the following question regarding Raymond Carver's short story Cathedral.
The term "epiphany," coined by James Joyce, has been used frequently in 20th century fiction to describe moments of "revelation" in a story where "everything becomes clear" to a character. The critic Malcolm Cowley defines epiphany as "that sudden reaching out of two characters through walls of inarticulateness and misunderstanding."To what extent does "Cathedral" end in an epiphany? How do you know?
Please, do not forget to use headings:
- A Title for your response "Be Creative"
- Basic Passage
- Correlation
- Difficulties
Note: I am looking for complexity in the correlation--a surprising or new angle.
Below is a sample response with headings and separate sections--your response should look like this example:
Title: Diet Coke Is The Reason
Intro to author: We, as readers, know very little about Billy Collins from the small amount of information the book entails. Billy Collins was born in 1941 in a New York City hospital he claims William Carlos Williams worked as a pediatric resident. He earned a Ph.D. at the University of California at Riverside in which he specialized in the Romantic Period. Now, he teaches at Lehman College of the City University.
Basic Passage: “and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.”
Correlation: I can definitely relate to this! I believe I am the one person out of all my friends around me who has the shortest memory. I feel like I am on the same level as my grandmother who is in the later stages of Alzheimer’s disease. No, I don’t forget my name or the names of my family and friends I see often. But as it says in the passage, I believe I forget a piece of information or a memory every time I study, learn something new, or create a new memory. I believe this “forgetfulness” of mine is related to my obsessed addiction to Diet Coke. Maybe if I start taking Gingko Biloba, it’ll counteract the Nutrasweet that leads to memory loss. But all joking aside, this poem demonstrates how valuable the present moment is. The knowledge that we will forget make "now" all that more important. We must surrender to this knowledge, this loss. This poem is bittersweet. It is about bothloss and life in the guise of forgetfulness.
Difficulties: I had no problem reading or understanding this poem.
Required questions:
Identify the cause of human suffering—Tragedy
How can the tragedy be turned into a comedy?
Identify the cause of joy or happiness—comedy
