Comparing Epiphanies In Sonny's Blues And Cathedral

When a person has a moment of realization or understanding from what was seen beneath the obvious, they have just experience an epiphany. Just like “A&P” by John Updike, “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin and “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the narrator's experienced epiphanies that made drastic changes of their perspective on life. Even though each character experienced epiphanies, the outcomes were completely different, positively and negatively. The narrator in “Sonny’s Blues”, who is Sonny’s older brother, being a kind man only sees disappointment through his brother because of his past. It was a sudden change where he began to see how personalities can change as time passes. He also learns not to judge only by someone's past or the outside.

When Sonny was released from prison, the narrator automatically judges his brother, “Yet, when he smiled, when we shook hands, the baby brother I’d never known looked out from the depths of his private life, like an animal to be coaxed into the light” (60); he begins to compare the lifestyle his brother might have lived in the pen, which was most likely terrible and had, but so was the addition to