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'Everyday Use' by Alice Walker and 'Cathedral' by Raymond Carver exemplify through a point of view, imagery, and symbolism, an issue of importance: stories that have an important look on life are more imperative than those that don't. 'Everyday Use' and 'Cathedral' both appear different but have significant similarities, which contains characters who don't see the world very clearly. This allows the characters of both stories to go through a unique development of their own self-views of the world.
In 'Everyday Use' Alice Walker opens the story by describing the poverty fixed lifestyle of Mama and her daughter Maggie.
These two characters swept their yard clean as a floor because it is an 'extended living room' of their home with 'no real windows'. Mama also gave an insight into her lifestyle by describing herself as a 'big-boned' women who have 'man-working hands' .She also describes her skillset of being able to 'kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man'.
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“ Amazing as always, gave her a week to finish a big assignment and came through way ahead of time. ”
It was the result of being an African American during the mid-1920s. Although Mama didn't attend school after second grade due to closure, her daughter Dee refuses to become like her.
Likewise, the character Bub from Raymond Carver 'Cathedral' is a close-minded, alcoholic who doesn't understand other feelings. Like Bub, Mama also lacks the ability to understand feelings due to how she treats her daughter Maggie, describing her as a 'lame animal'. Although Mama seems to be heartless toward her daughter Maggie, she looks up to her other daughter Dee.
Mama describes Dee as a person who is 'determine to stare down any disaster'.
Both characters in 'Everyday Use' and 'Cathedral' use their own lack of knowledge to create a change in their life. Bub realize he wanted a change of some sort when he drew the cathedral with lots of people inside it. It helped him come to the realization of the meaning to a community. Starting with the act of eating and sharing food with someone, which help bring people together. For the first time in the story 'Cathedral', it really brings out how Robert is positively growing as a person. While Mama is showing a change in her own way by seeing her daughter Maggie in a different light. She is coming to realize that Maggie is smart and charming in her own sense compared to her sister Dee. Mama and Bub are showing promise to change, whether that is temporarily or permanent.
However, Mama already has a sense of community unlike the character Bub who is lacking the term. Her daughter Dee is like Bub in a way that both characters say what's on their mind and doesn't care whom it offends. This is totally different from Mama personality because she wouldn't dare 'look a strange white man in the eye'. Her sense of community is going to church and work to support her two daughters. While Bub definition of community is when he and Robert smoke together. This may not be an essential way of bonding for most, but in this case, it really brought him and Robert closer together. The act of doing something rebellious together showed that they could become friends.
Additionally, while drawing the cathedral, Robert had urged Bub to open his eyes at the very end to see what they had drawn, but he had seen something else. 'My eyes are still closed' Bub stated as he felt 'he wasn't inside anything'. This was when Bub realize the meaning of community because he later went on to tell Robert that 'It's really something' . In Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use', she sets up the story in a way that we feel animosity towards Dee because she is beautiful, confident and mostly ungrateful. Likewise, Maggie is a simple, self-conscious girl with burn scars. She gradually is being revealed in the story as the real sympathetic character.
The main conflict, aside from the idea that Dee is more favorable to Mama, is that the Mama is not sure whom to let have their family's quilt. Maggie and Dee argue over the quilt, which is huge character development for Maggie because she always thought her sister 'held her life in the palm of one hand'. Dee, being all-around better than her sister, seems like the person to receive the quilt since she always was given more in the past. This conflict was a way for Maggie and her mother to become closer and gain a better sense of community overall. Dee, however, seems to have a false sense of community. This is because she is the favored one and takes things for granted. The girls who hung around her were 'nervous girls who never laughed'. That alone helped Maggie's appeal and showed more to her mom to build a greater bond and proved that community can change someone's life.
In Cathedral, Carver uses symbols to demonstrate the building of community between Bub and Robert's relationship. The first being blindness, which is obvious because Robert is blind, however, there is irony in that. Robert shows Bub that he truly understands life, and he knows more than just a 'regular blind person'. Bub later come to realize that Robert is just as human as he is and has all the other qualities anyone else can have. This is the greatest point of epiphany for Bub because he finally understands that he has been looking at life incorrectly. Cathedrals represent a place of union, which is created if people learn to work together.
In 'Everyday Use' there are two distinct symbols. The first being the mother's quilt. The quilt represented their family heritage, and development through generations. Dee wanted to use the quilt for a museum like purpose, however, Maggie wanted to use it for keeping someone warm. Maggie and Mama believe the quilt should be kept in the family and used as a blanket to represent their heritage and give them a daily reminder of where they come from. This turn of events leads Dee to tell Maggie 'You ought to try and make something of yourself, too, Maggie. It's really a new day for us'. Dee is telling Maggie and her mom that they have no idea about their heritage, however, Dee is the one who doesn't truly understand it. The second symbol is Maggie's burn scars. These scars represent oppression and show the 'scarred' past of how the African culture was treated. They also represent Maggie's culture in which she should wear them proudly.
In conclusion, the characters from both 'Everyday Use' by Alice Walker and 'Cathedral' by Raymond Carver had gone through a change in one way or another. Whether that is permanent or temporary, only the reader views of the stories can decide.
Alice Walkers Everyday Use and Cathedral By Raymond Carver Analysis. (2024, Feb 04). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/alice-walkers-everyday-use-and-cathedral-by-raymond-carver-analysis-essay
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