another thing in the cool of the A & P” (Updike 16). When the girls in bathing suits arrive at the store, Sammy reveals his surprise at the girls’ unashamed demeanor: “You know, it’s one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach.
The catalysts for change were definitely unexpected by Sammy and the husband.
It is this contrast that magnifies the enormous reversal of perception for the two main characters at the end of the stories. The negative opinions the two main characters share about these people are important in that they create an immediate contrast between them and the bringers of change. Then, after letting us know that his perception of blindness was formed by movies he has watched, the husband says, “A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (Carver 448). He immediately says, “His being blind bothered me” (Carver 448). Likewise, the husband in “Cathedral” shares similar feelings by revealing his reservations about the blind man, Robert, coming to visit. Sammy’s name for the leader of the girls, “ Queenie,” also shows that he does not take them seriously. Sammy, after the girls enter the store, sarcastically asks the following question: “o you really think it’s a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?” (Updike 15). The group of girls in “ A&P” and Robert, the blind man, in “Cathedral” are both viewed as having little value by the main characters.
The catalysts for change in these stories are similar: the two main characters view them negatively, they are unexpected intruders into the main characters’ every day routines, and they represent a way out from the closed world of the main characters. For Sammy in “ A&P” it is the young, scantily-clad girls who bring about this change, and for the husband in “Cathedral” it is the blind man Robert. Both Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral” and John Updike’s short story “ A&P” contain central characters who are confronted with people who initially represent a stereotype to them but ultimately work as catalysts for a profound and unexpected change in the way they view the world.
0 kommentar(er)
