Comparison and Contrast between Hills like White Elephants and the Cathedral

This essay compares and contrasts the stories 'Hills like White Elephants' and 'The Cathedral' in terms of their portrayal of romantic relationships and the dynamics within them.

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Comparison and Contrast between Hills like White Elephants and the Cathedral
Romantic and marital relationships are as varied as the people engaged in them since they
are a plethora of human interaction that call for vulnerability while facing life together. Hills like
White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway is about a couple, who are at a train station. They are
debating if the wife should proceed with a procedure or not, and the dilemma is that the wife
wants to become a mother while the man does not want to start a family (Ernest, 39-44). The
Cathedral by Carver is about a married man, Robert, his wife and a blind man. The story is
narrated through the observations, thoughts and actions of Robert (Carver). In the beginning
Robert, an emotionally closed of man, who is inattentive to the sensitivities of his wife, is
prejudiced against the blind man since they are different. He cannot comprehend how the blind
man could even have a wife, let alone experience life in its true depth. This essay will seek to
break down these two stories, and to shed some light on their comparison and contrasts.
Some clear comparisons between the two stories is that in both stories, the man and the
woman in a relationship. When they are faced with the same circumstances, they face them
differently. In the Cathedral, the wife is enthusiastic about the blind man while the husband is
not. In the Hills Like White Elephants, the woman is enthusiastic about the prospect of a new
different life, a family life, while the man wants to go on living a life of travel and adventure like

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they have been doing. In this respect, both stories have the element of tension. Robert is tense
about the arrival of the blind man, and he is apprehensive of how to relate with him when he
stays at his house. The man at the train station is tense about the arrival of new life, of a baby, as
this is not something he had anticipated. Both stories also use the art of drawing to communicate
the dynamics of the relationships. The Cathedral uses a drawing to bring the characters together
while Hills like White Elephants uses a painting to show the division between the couple as
elaborated by Link (Link, 66-74).
The contrast between the two stories is how the men change in the end. In Cathedral,
Robert who is prejudiced against the blind man and who questions his ability to experience life
because he thinks without the ability of sight life lacks luster, becomes vulnerable and in touch
with his feelings while drawing the cathedral with the blind man (Brown, 125-136). He says that
he felt life in a way he had never experienced it before. Instead, the couple at the train station
have a wide rift. This is depicted by the man taking the bags and crossing to the other side of the
train station while his wife remains behind as they wait for the train to arrive. Their words say
the opposite of what they are feeling (Rankin, 234-237). It is quite clear that their viewpoints in
life are divergent at the prospect of having a family, and this completely changes the dynamic of
their relationship.
To conclude, the romantic relationships are presented with a new relationship, and while
the couple at the train station gets destroyed by the prospect of the new life, Robert gets to
experience life in a new way though his wife’s friend, as he becomes more open to life and
vulnerable to the changes life presents to him (Facknitz, 287).

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Works Cited
Brown, Arthur A. "Raymond Carver and postmodern humanism." Critique: Studies in
Contemporary Fiction 31.2 (1990): 125-136.
Carver, Raymond. The Stories of Raymond Carver. London: Pan Books, 1985.
Facknitz, Mark AR. "" The Calm,"" A Small, Good Thing," and" Cathedral": Raymond Carver
and the Rediscovery of Human Worth." Studies in Short Fiction 23.3 (1986): 287.
Hemingway, Ernest. "Hills like white elephants." Men without women (1927): 39-44.
Link, Alex. "Staking Every Thing on It: A Stylistic Analysis of Linguistic Patterns in" Hills like
White Elephants"." The Hemingway Review 23.2 (2004): 66-74.
Rankin, Paul. "Hemingway's Hills like White Elephants." The Explicator 63.4 (2005): 234-237.