Blog 4 Naked to the World Tina Radstone

Raymond Carver's Cathedral is a story about a man whose life is suspended in animation and is going nowhere and is jealous of his wife's relationship with a blind man that she worked for named Robert. The narrator is unnamed and is ignorant to blindness and acts as though he is unsure of himself which causes him to judge Robert when he is in fact the one who is “blind” to the world. Carver's use of blindness as a symbol gives the reader and insight and meaning to how the husband reacts to life and this blind person, Robert. A really good example of the narrator being ignorant to blind people is right in the beginning of the story when he explains, "And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing eye dogs. A blind man in the house was not something that I looked forward to." (174). This shows that he doesn't know very much about blind people and he forms his opinion of Robert based upon stereotyping from cinema. The narrator always refers to Robert as "the blind man"; he never calls him by his first name. I know that he does this because he is scared and doesn't know how to communicate with a blind person as if it requires a certain special skill. The narrator has no friends except that of his wife and lacks social skills which clearly shows the reader that this guy has a problem with people without even to getting to know them. He makes a rude comment about taking the blind man to go and play pool and all his wife wants him to do is make this man feel comfortable in his stay at their home. She makes this obvious by saying, "If you love me you can do this for me. If you don't love me okay. But if you have a friend, any friend and the friend came to visit, I'd make him feel comfortable." (176). This statement makes it obvious to  me that he has no friends at all whatsoever and is confirmed by his wife she says, "You don't have any friends...Period..." (176). Another outstanding use of symbolism is the cathedral. The narrator asks the blind man, "Do you have any idea what a cathedral is? What they look like that is?" (180). How can this blind man possibly know what a cathedral looks like; he's blind! The cathedral is used as a learning tool for the narrator to teach the blind man what a cathedral looks like through by first telling him characteristics of the cathedral, "To begin with they are very tall." (181). Seriously this was not a good way to explain what a cathedral looked like to a blind man. The cathedral was then again a learning tool for the blind man because he would hold his hand over the husband's and draw it together. Paragraph 116, page 182 explains this, "He found my hand, the hand with the pen. He closed his fist over my hand." The cathedral in the end of the story helps the blind man to visualize and conceptualize what a cathedral "looks like" but more importantly it changed the life of the narrator from being blind to Robert's disability by being able to open his heart and mind to his own life and the lives of others. A good example of this is when the narrator says "It was like nothing else in my life up to now." (183).

Blog 3 A turn for the worst... Tina Radstone

     I chose Option 3 for the use of irony in Poe's and Chopin's stories because both stories had outcomes that were crazy, weird and more importantly unexpected. In both The Story of an Hour and The Cask of Amontillado the authors use irony to keep their readers suspended. This allows the reader to plug in their own thoughts for the outcome and keeps the reader guessing to what is going to happen.

     In the beginning of The Story of an Hour, Chopin’s uses irony in such a way in which she gives out little “kernels” to keep up interested and curious. Almost like that of eating popcorn at the movie theatre wondering what is going to happen next. This happens in the beginning of the story where Mrs. Mallard learns of her husband’s death by his friend Richards who saw Mrs. Mallory’s husbands name on the list of “killed” and Richards “had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by second telegram…” (337). This lead me to believe that Brently Mallard is dead because the second telegram confirms that it was the truth when in fact in the end we learned that he is alive and “had been far from the scene of the accident, and didn’t even know there had been one.” (338). Chopin also states in the text that Mrs. Mallard “was afflicted with heart trouble…” (337). This sentence gave me the impression that her condition was serious but yet isn’t mentioned continuously throughout the story. The irony in this story is that she had heart trouble and didn’t die from the symptoms of her heart trouble; she in fact died of---“a joy that kills.” (339). The joy that killed Mrs. Mallard/Louise is the joy that she experienced when she found out that her husband had died in a train accident. She was happy and relieved and shares that by whispering, “Free! Body and soul free!” (338). It is the very moment when Mrs. Mallard’s own joy made her happy knowing that her husband died and is the same joy that kills her when she sees her husband is alive standing behind Richards who tried to stand in front of him so that his wife wouldn’t see him.

In The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe, the story uses irony to exemplify symbolism. A clear example of this is the name of Montresor’s friend/victim “Fortunato”; which is an Italian name that symbolizes a fortunate or lucky person. This is interesting because the narrator describes his friend stating that, “He had a weak point---this Fortunato---although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared.” (525). Fortunato’s name implies that he is a man with good fortune or is lucky, but Montresor states again, “Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack…” (525) He is implying that Fortunato is a con artist, a fraud, a man that is to be feared; the total opposite of what any person might think that of his name. Furthermore Fortunato isn’t so fortunate at the end when he was buried alive in the cask. Another example of irony in this story is when Fortunato told Montresor, “You are not of the masons” (527) and he wants Montresor to prove that he is. Montresor answers by jesting to Fortunato, “Is it this” (527) and pulls out a trowel from beneath the roquelaire (cloak). What Montressor is asking him is if is if he is with the Free Masons and Montresor knows what he his asking but jokes with him and says he is some sort of craftsman. He talks of his masonry in the text that proves that he is a craftsman. He states on page 528, “I had scarcely laid the first tier of my masonry …” and as he is finishing his work he said, “…holding the flambeaux over the mason work…” This is ironic because with all the materials that he has, he is building a burial for his victim, alive!

Sticks and Stone... Blog 2 Tina Radstone

I did Blog 2 on The Lottery by Shirley Jackson which is a short story that portrays a small village that partakes in the annual ritual of having a lottery in which the "prize" isn't money; it is the stoning of a towns person that picks a piece of paper with a black mark on it. The ritual although seems very primal and barbaric, is carried out every year in this modern town. The speaker in this story is told in third person, dramatic point of view. The author does this so that the reader isn't totally informed what is going on and so that she doesn't give out any obvious conclusions. Jackson only gives little hints as to what is going on in the story so that the reader can make their own conclusions. In the beginning of the story Jackson starts out the story by telling us, "The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny with the fresh warmth of the summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely..." (140). This opening of the story starts out describing what the day is like. It made me feel as though I could actually smell the flowers  that were blossoming and could feel the heat of the sun on my face. It also makes the reader feel in the beginning that it is going to be a good day for the lottery and someone is going to be happy because they are winning some money. This is exactly what Jackson's intentions were. There are no hints, she isn't telling us how people feel, she didn't lead us to the way we think that the story is suppose to go. Jackson also talks about the gathering of stones from the children. The author states, "Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones and the other boys soon followed his example..." (140). When I was reading this I couldn't make out what these boys were going to do with the stones because it was the beginning of the story and there was no specific point made what they were going to do with them. For all I knew and was thinking is that there were boys gathering stones so I thought that maybe they were going to play some game with them. It's not until the end of the story that you are told exactly what these stones are going to be used for. The character Tessie Huchinson was standing in the center of some space that was cleared out for her and the towns people gathered around and you then know she is being stone because it states on page 145, "A stone hit her on the side of the head." My mouth dropped opened because I really didn't want to think that something so uncivilized and cruel was happening in that small modern day town. If the narrator in this story would have told her point of view in the first person, I believe that the story's ending wouldn't have had the same effect on us as she telling the story in third person. My point is that in first person speaker Jackson would have talked about things that she has done heard, and thought from her first hand experiences. (123). If she had done then she would have expelled the reason why these children were gathering stones and what kind of lottery it really was. If this was done then the whole premise of the reader drawing their own conclusion wouldn't have happened.