Marriage
Let’s look at two marriages; the marriage in the story “Cathedral” written by Raymond Carver with that of Leroy and Norma Jean in the story “Shiloh” written by Bobbie Ann Mason. Let’s also look at a poem “When I consider how my light is spent” written by John Milton. Here is a poem you can compare to “Cathedral.” You have two totally differently marriages, but are they really different, or do they have similarities? For beginners, they both had a third person involved that had a big impact on their marriage. The third person in “Cathedral” can be compared to the person in “When I consider how my light is spent.” Marriages have a pattern and when the pattern has an interruption in it they can become stronger or just simply end. Let’s analyze these three pieces. Let’s look at how these three different pieces of literature really come together.
The couple in “Cathedral” written by Raymond Carver was young and was always around each other. They seemed to be in love with one other. Now, the couple in “Shiloh written by Bobbie Ann Mason was an older couple. Here was a couple who had to be in love with each other because here they were in the gym working out together.
Let’s look at the couple in “Cathedral” The one problem in their marriage; the narrator was a jealous and nervous man. He was told by his wife that a blind man, Robert, that she knew and used to work for was coming to their house to spend the night there. All he knew of this blind man was that his wife had “worked for him one summer in Seattle ten years ago” (Carver, 1983, p. 455), and that they stayed in touch by making tapes and mailing them back and forth. As for the couple in “Shiloh” the problem here was, Leroy was a long haul truck driver and was always on the road, never home until now. Leroy was involved in a trucking accident and was now doing physical therapy. Norma Jean was so use to him being gone all the time that she was set in her routine and now had to curve it to help take...