Why I Live At The P. O And Cathedral Analysis

When writing from a first person perspective, it is easy to write a story similar to another*. Though the story may have a completely different story line, it can be very similar to another in structure or format. An example of two stories that are similar in structure are “Cathedral” and “Why I Live At the P.O.” “Cathedral”, written by Raymond Carter, tells the first person account of a man who befriends his wife’s recently widowed blind friend. Though the narrator is cautious of the blind man at first, the two end up bonding over watching television and cathedrals. “Why I Live at the P.O” is written by Eudora Welty and tells the story of one sister who is very jealous of her own sister who the narrator believes is the “favorite child.” Both “Cathedral” and “Why I Live at the P.O” are short stories written from a first person perspective that are very different in context but similar in structure.

For instance, when the narrator of “Why I Live at the P.O” opens her story with the statement that she “was getting along fine with Mama, Pappa-Daddy, and Uncle Rondo until (her) sister Stella-Rondo just separated from her husband and came back home again,” one can infer that that will likely be the main purpose of her story. If a story were written from a different perspective, it would be much more difficult to get her point across*. Just like “Why I Live at the P.O,” “Cathedral” begins with the narrator stating that “(t)his blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night.” Both stories open with those sentences which would be equivalent to a thesis statement for a paper with an argument. In a short amount of time, both stories establish a first person perspective, how the narrators feel, and the story’s main