Response Paper 3
Love is an intense feeling of deep affection and loss is the fact or process of
losing something or someone. The idea of love and loss are both portrayed throughout the
four stories, making it the two central themes. In the story “Cathedral,” written by
Raymond Carver, the difference between looking and seeing in regards to loss and the art
as insight of love. In the second story by John Updike called “Separating,” the themes of
love and loss is incorporated in the issue that is so common now a days of divorce within
a family. In the short story “Weekend” by Ann Beattie the two themes are used in the
sense of sacrifice being a way to show love and loss. The last story A Streetcar Named
Desire by Tennessee Williams, the themes are used in a way of showing love by desire.
All four stories portray the themes of love and loss in there own unique way.
To begin with, in the story “Cathedral,” written by Raymond Carver there are two
specific themes that are portrayed throughout the story. The first theme is the difference
between looking and seeing in regards to loss. In “Cathedral,” the demonstration of
looking is identified with physical vision, however the demonstration of seeing obliges a
deeper level of engagement. The narrator demonstrates that he is completely equipped for
looking. He takes a gander at his home and wife, and he takes a gander at Robert when he
arrives. The narrator is not visually impaired and promptly accepts that he’s in this
manner better than Robert. Robert’s lack of sight, the storyteller reasons, makes him not
able to fulfill a lady, in addition to have any sort of ordinary life. The narrator is sure that
the capacity to see is everything and puts no exertion into seeing anything past the
surface, which is without a doubt why he doesn’t generally know his wife exceptionally
well. Robert, be that as it may, can “see” on a much deeper level than the storyteller.
Despite the fact that Robert can’t physically see the storyteller’s wife, he comprehends her
more profoundly than the storyteller does in light of the fact that he really tunes in. The
wife clearly has a great deal to say and has put in the previous ten years trusting in Robert
on the audiotapes she sends him. The main cooperation we see between the storyteller
and his wife, on the other hand, are mean trades in which the storyteller does minimal
more than bother her. Genuine “seeing,” as Robert shows, includes a ton more than
simply looking.
The second theme portrayed in the story “Cathedral” is the art as insight of love.
The storyteller, his wife, and Robert discover understanding and importance in their
encounters through verse, drawing, and narrating. As indicated by the narrator, his wife
composes several poems consistently to stamp occasions that were imperative in her life,
