Autobiography Of Red Geryon Analysis

The narrator’s lack of imagination leads him to reject what is beyond his visual perception. The narrator looks at his surroundings plainly as they are and therefore fails to see the deeper meanings behind it. Throughout the story, the narrator is watching television, which symbolizes his narrow perspective and his failure to observe the world on his own. His “idea of blindness came from the movies” (Carver 315) and this preconceived notion results in his unenthusiastic attitude towards Robert before

“Gryphon” is an thrilling fiction story by the funny author Charles Baxter. The story take place in a classroom in Five Oaks, Michigan and is about an ordinary 6th grade boy, Tommy who encounters a strange sub named Ms. Ferenczi. The message that Charles Baxter is giving us is that everyone is different and nothing is wrong with that.

The narrator is pre-judgemental towards all people who are blind, whether or not he has met them. He believes all blind people are the same as those he has watched in movies. The narrator perception of the blind is that they “moved slowly and never laughed” and when they went out “they were led by seeing eye-dogs” (Carver 104). The movie industry creates a false image of the blind, which leads to the narrator’s assumptions. However, the blind are not all the same, just like how everyone else in the world are not the same. People are designed to be different in their personalities, thoughts, looks and much more. The narrator’s ideas of Robert are based off of false conceptions and this changes his attitude towards Robert. The narrator already has strong feelings towards Robert before meeting him

In the narrative, the author writes the story in first person point of view through an unnamed narrator which enables the reader to visualize, experience, and perceive a deeper insight into his mind. The story commences with the narrator speaking directly to the audience appearing closed-off and narrow-minded. His wife has an old friend named Robert, who happens to be blind, coming to spend the night. Right away, the reader can sense how the narrator comes off as self-absorbed. He`s only concerned about how Robert’s visit will affect him and is inconsiderate about the strong bond Robert and his wife have built over the years. The narrator also lacks self-awareness when he found himself thinking “what a pitiful life this woman must have led.” (Carver 3) The woman being Beulah, Robert`s recently deceased wife, who the narrator belittled as she married a blind man and now she “could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one.” (Carver 3) Not realizing that with

Many people seek to find passion in their life, something they feel gives them drive or purpose. Many only find one, if any at all. Eli Gershkovitch, however, has found three, all while making a booming business in the process. Eli Gershkovitch's interests run the gamut from brewing to aviation to Law and all seem to inextricably intertwine themselves. His interest in craft brewing tied itself greatly to his legal knowledge, experience and landmarks in life. Following his graduation from the University of Toronto's law school in 1987 Eli Gershkovitch began a European tour kicked off a series of events that would bud into a brewing empire.

In almost every story there is a meaning, whether that meaning is obvious or not is up to the readers’ interpretations. In some stories, that meaning hides behind a character, how that person acts, thinks, or express themselves and how they change throughout resembling growth. In Raymond Carver’s “The Cathedral”, the unnamed husband narrators the tale of his wife’s old blind friend Robert coming to visit after not seeing each other for years. They had remained in contact through audiotapes, but the husband seems to not understand the significance of their relationship, showing distaste with the visit for the majority of the story, due to his uncomfortableness. In this story, the writer displays his tale and its morals; by using the narration of the husband; Carver shows that there comes to be more meaning behind this bitter man that meets the eye, which argues the fact that perhaps this unlikable narrator is truly the antihero.

The narrator from Raymond Carver’s ‘Cathedral’, lived a clouded state of mind where his thoughts kept him from reaching the pellucid reality. Through the beginning of the narrative, the narrator expresses his harsh and judgmental opinions about blindness- which represents his incapacity and closed-mindedness to see beyond him. Later on his perspective is changed thanks to a sudden events. The narrator, which has no given name, is bothered by the impending visit of his wife’s blind friend, Robert. The narrator’s wife used to work for Robert from which they developed a relationship and inspired the wife to write poems about it. They, the wife and Robert, have maintained a constant communication through mailed tapes. All of these added up more to the narrator’s dislike for Robert. For example, when the narrator express his desconstest towards Robert’s disability: “And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies” (‘Cathedral’, Raymond Carver). Here the narrator’s narrowness and lack of sympathy is palpable. He is simple and superficial. Lives in a 2D way, is incapable of bearing a thought outside the box, and explore the depths of life in general. He is unhappy with his current work position but does nothing to change that fact. That’s until Robert’s visit. This is changed once the narrator gets to know Robert and Robert opens the narrator’s mind to life seen through another pair of eyes. For instance, after dinner is over, the narrator and Robert are watching a documentary about cathedrals. Suddenly, the narrator wonders if Robert has any knowledge of how cathedrals look like. There is where their journey begins. Robert ask to the narrator to draw a cathedral for him and request the narrator to add specific details (people, etc.). “So we kept on it. His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over

The Narrator’s thoughts show us that he holds onto these prejudgements of blind people, believing they have both physical and mental incapabilities, and has not made a point to try and fix this perspective. The Narrator also feels he has an inherent superiority to Robert because of this, placing a self-centered twist onto everything. For all of the Narrators prejudice towards others, he is more than happy to not place any of his critical and judgemental focus on himself.

One of these main lessons I believe was that there is a difference between physically seeing and perceptively seeing. Although Robert was not able to see things physically like the narrator, he was able to perceive things in a way that the narrator could not. This could be seen when it came to Robert and the narrator's wife. Even though the Robert was unable to see the narrator's wife, he could perceptively see her, understand her, and listen to her in a way the narrator was unable to. He understood her problems and poetry, and give her companionship in a way that the husband did not see that she needed. From the beginning of the story, the narrator gave the impression that he believed he was better than the blind man because he had physical sight. After realizing the blind man understood his wife more and during the last moments when the two of them drew a cathedral together, the narrator's perspective changed.

Many people prefer short stories to novels because short stories must immediately capture the readers’ attention and pull them into the story. Often the author resolves the conflict in a way that leaves the ending open for interpretation by the reader, thus personalizing the experience. As shown in The Top 20 Literary Quotes About Short Stories, author Lorrie Moore aptly remarked, “A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph, a novel is a film.” In the present day world, it has become common for people to strive for equality; however, this could be harmful if taken too far. There would be nothing to make anyone unique, dulling the world of all its wonder. In “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, the year is 2081, and everyone has been physically altered so all people possess equal abilities. The line, "all this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the constitution," tells the reader that government brought on the equality. Some people are forced to wear weights to tame their physical strength, masks to hide their beauty, and even ear devices to distract them from meaningful thought. The everlasting theme of the story is equality and control. If an outside force capable of controlling citizens’ thoughts, looks, and actions removed all autonomy, all that would remain would be the shells of those individualized people.

Although, the narrator struggles with the misunderstandings behind his wife’s and the blind man’s relationship it becomes apparent that Robert was in fact married. The narrator is proven to have jealous thoughts and a biased opinion of what blind people are like, but he realizes that Robert was now widowed and has lost a woman that “never [saw] herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one” (Carver 458). Robert was the “husband [that] could never read the expression on her face, be it misery or something better” (458). These revelations are just a few that possibly help the narrator start to feel some comfort behind the upcoming visit.

George Sherston, the main character of Sherston’s Progress, is a curious mentality for the reader to decipher. As a victim of Shell Shock, (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) he is persistently grappling with understanding his own mind and this becomes the task of the reader as well. Due to this omnipresent task, one becomes a psychoanalyst of George. The only difference between Rivers and the reader is that Rivers actually interacts with George while the reader can only sit back and watch. I will be investigating the first section of the book to better understand the character Rivers.

In the beginning of the story, the husband, who is the narrator of “Cathedral,” seems to be a very ignorant, uncaring man. Nesset wrote “Walled in by his own insecurities and prejudices, this narrator is sadly out of touch with his world and with himself, buffered by drink and pot and by the sad reality, as his wife puts it, that he has no ‘friends’” (Nesset 124). The narrator has no connection to himself or the outside world. He has no friends, as his wife points out, which goes to show he keeps to himself, but he still doesn’t fully understand who “himself” is, because he doesn’t have that connection to himself, thus leading to the drinking and drugs. He wasn’t used to change, so having a visitor come over to his house bothered him. The moment he saw Robert, the narrator began to change. When his wife pulled up with the blind man in the car and they got out of the car, he saw that Robert had a beard and he thought to himself, “This blind man, feature this, he was wearing a full beard! A beard on a blind man! Too much, I say” (Carver 35). The narrator had expected to see the blind man in the way they showed them in the movies, but now that his idea of who Robert was as a person was being challenged, the change started to appear. Robert, who is a static character, is very essential in the change of the narrator. It is because Robert is the way he is, his marrying of a colored woman, his travels around the

In studying a story, especially one that concludes within a few pages, forming an understanding of the characters can be challenging. Clues sprinkled within the story direct and develop the reader’s ideas about the characters, namely through the setting, tone, or even simple objects within the story.Charles Baxter’s Gryphon encompasses this exact problem; the limited number of pages contain all of the story’s information and the reader’s puzzle begins.Within the small classroom and few pages, the reality of life in Five Oaks evaporates, an implicit bond forms between Miss Ferenczi and our main character, and the reader’s begin putting together the pieces.

“Pygmalion was written to challenge the class system, traditional stereotypes and the audience’s own views.”