Literary Analysis: A Comparison of Updike's A&P and Carver's Cathedral

This essay undertakes a comparative analysis of John Updike's "A&P" and Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," two short stories that explore themes of societal expectations, personal epiphanies, and the shattering of preconceived notions. The essay examines the protagonists in both stories: Sammy in ...Read More

Running Head: COMPARISON BETWEEN UPDIKE’S ‘A&P’ AND CARVER’S
‘CATHEDRAL
Comparison between Updike’s ‘A&P’ and Carver’s ‘Cathedral’
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

1COMPARISON BETWEEN UPDIKE’S ‘A&P’ AND CARVER’S ‘CATHEDRAL
John Updike and Raymond carver were both contemporaries writing in the period widely
ushered under the influence of modernism, and both the writers show the influence of the
concepts and ideas which the people were freeing themselves of that has been rendered useless
and illogical by the concepts of modernism. Updike’s ‘A&P,’ named after a consumers oriented
institution which still banks on the conventional idea of the living conditions shows the struggle
of the protagonist who has a conventional idea of girls and their dressing technique and in
carver’s story we see the protagonist who stays nameless and is the narrator of the story has
formed the conception for blind people based on the stereotype image generated from the newly
found obsession of the mass media communication in the shape of a television. Both characters
share the same change, which is caused by the shattering of these stereotypes in the form of
epiphany, which gives them a new direction of view towards life itself.
Both the short story shows the coming of age people who are growing used to the
understanding of the modernist approach displayed by the people around them which in the
beginning disturbs them but the sudden dawn of realization and discovery of the other side of
perception directly in contrast to theirs is the aspect which is similar in both the protagonists
(Brannon, 2018). In Updike’s story, we see the young boy of eighteen reaching the conception of
the understanding of the disrespect and judgmental view, which causes him to feel the unease,
and we see him stripping off his work uniform and resigning. In the ‘Cathedral, we see the
narrator, who is the husband of the blind man’s friend, who has formed the conception regarding
the life led by blind men through the ideas depicted in the movies he has watched in movies in
the past.

2COMPARISON BETWEEN UPDIKE’S ‘A&P’ AND CARVER’S ‘CATHEDRAL
Updike’s story revolves around the protagonist, Sammy, who id shown to be distracted
by the young girls dressed in their bathing suits in the grocery shop and immediately is shown to
be forming imaginations regarding them according to their clothes and their physical attributes
(Sadeq and Mohammed, 2016). This is broken by the confrontation of the girls with the manager
who upbraids them and asks them to put on proper clothes next time they go: “After this come in
here with your shoulders covered. It’s our policy.” out due to which Sammy gets upsets and
resigns from the job (Updike, 2020, pp. 3). But, in the end, the narrator shows that the
appreciation which he was expecting from the girls was not attainable was nowhere to be found
as the girls have already left.
In the ‘Cathedral,’ the narrator’s wife informs him about a visit from a blind friend of
hers who have not met for the past ten years and the detail about their experience of him
touching her face before leaving but being very close to his wife ho he has lost recently. But the
idea of blind people being unaware of the perception of life, which was based on his knowledge
gathered about them from the movies he has watched. The story escalates quickly, and when the
narrator and the Robert (the blind man) are left alone, and he tries to explain the ongoing action
on the television screen to him but is suddenly faced with the problem of having to explain the
man a cathedral “How could I even begin to describe it? But say my life depended on it”
(Carver, 2020, pp.11). This is the changing moment in his life when Robert, on feeling the
drawing of the cathedral guides him into drawing it again with his help but with closed eyes.
This changes the way he sees a thing; a sort of epiphany occurs to him, and he declares that he
finally something which was there.
The occurrences of events both show the people inclining towards the nonconformity
with the conventions of the pre-modern period and the new approach towards life, which shows

3COMPARISON BETWEEN UPDIKE’S ‘A&P’ AND CARVER’S ‘CATHEDRAL
the formation of personal choices about their ideology (Heaman, 2017). The girls in the store are
a fresh change for Sammy, who is used to seeing women properly clad in their wrappings with
children wrapped around their legs, but the representation of these girls was the change in
ideology (Carver, 2020). They represented the shift of view in people who were adhering to the
modern view of life. His view of the fact that it is very cool to see girls in the bathing attire in the
store. Similarly, in Cathedral, we see the husband mocking his wife that he might take her friend
to a bowling alley, but he was the subject of the joke for the thought of stepping outside the
comfort of his daily routine made him uncomfortable.
At the climax of the stories, the readers are introduced to the new version of the
characters who have changed perspective due to the change in the way they view life. The
similarity in which the author shatters the stereotype for the character shows how they had a keen
observance of the changing perception of life. Both the entities which bring about the change in
their lives are different and surprising, for they are both an uncommon thing to happen to the
protagonists.

4COMPARISON BETWEEN UPDIKE’S ‘A&P’ AND CARVER’S ‘CATHEDRAL
References
Brannon, William. "Introduction to Literature I: Short Story and Novel." (2018).
Carver, R. (2020). Cathedral. Retrieved 2 February 2020, from
http://www.giuliotortello.it/ebook/cathedral.pdf
Heaman, Patricia B. "Updike, John." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. 2017.
Sadeq, Ala Eddin, and Mohammed Al-Badawi. "Epiphanic Awakenings in Raymond Carver’s
Cathedral and Alice Walker’s Everyday Use." Advances in Language and Literary
Studies 7.3 (2016): 157-160.
Updike, J. (2020). A&P. Retrieved 2 February 2020, from
https://littletonpublicschools.net/sites/default/files/HHS-2015-Eng-10%20Honors
%20Summer%20reading_1.pdf