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Essay Comparing Rocking Horse Winner And Cathedral

898 Words4 Pages

Two short stories that are very interesting and different is "The Rocking Horse Winner" and "Cathedral." They are very distinguished with the themes of each short story. In "The Rocking Horse Winner" one of the many themes is obsession and a person can perceive that reading throughout the whole short story. In "Cathedral" one of the main themes is understanding and to see that a person has to read the whole story and see that in the end. The difference between the two short stories "The Rocking Horse Winner" and "Cathedral" " are the ideas of each of the stories are so disparate. In the "Rocking Horse Winner" obsession is such a big theme. So many of the characters in this short story shows that. Obsession is when a person is fixated on a certain thing and unhealthily devoted to it. In this short story there is the young boy named Paul. Paul has a special gift and that is to figure out who will be the upcoming winner of the …show more content…

In the story the narrator, who is also the husband, is very judgmental at first. He is this way because his wife's friend is coming to stay with them for a couple of days and her friend is a blind man named Robert. The husband never met this man, never the less a blind man. In the beginning he is stereotyping the blind man by saying, "My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind move slowly and never laughed" (Carver 456). Once Robert had arrived at his house he was still skeptical. They had little conversation here and there through the day, but it was mostly his wife and Robert. In the day they also mostly drank and talked until later in the evening the husband turned on the tv. The wife got mad, but then realized Robert had actually watched TV at home until he said, "My dear, I have two TV's. I have a color set and a black-and-white thing, an old relic" (460). They realized after that just because he is blind doesn't mean he does not have a

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