Point Of View To Enable The Story To Be Experienced Essay, Research Paper

Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” a story that entails a man’s epiphany about a misplaced prejudice, is narrated from the first person point of view to enable the reader to fully understand the narrator’s thoughts. However, in William Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily” just the opposite is true. In Faulkner’s story, the narrator has a limited third person point of view which allows the reader to dodge any emotional ties with Emily, the main character, and to form his own ideas about Emily’s actions. Both story’s meanings rely on the fact that the author’s choice of point of view gives the reader the ability to experience the narrator’s epiphany as the narrator does.

In “Cathedral,” the narrator shares his feelings towards meeting his wife’s blind friend. This “emotional briefing” gives the reader a chance to “bond” with the narrator. The reader gets an insight into how the narrator thinks and feels, and , thus enabling the reader to understand and sympathize with the narrator. The reader is able to make assumptions of what the narrator might be subconsciously thinking. However, in “A Rose For Emily,” this is not the case.

In Faulkner’s story, an onlooker tells of the peculiar events that occurred during Miss Emily’s life. The author never lets the reader understand Emily’s side to the story. Instead, the reader is forced to guess why Emily is as strange as she is. In the story, Emily had harbored her father’s dead body in her house for three days (par. 27). The reader is told of how the town looked upon what Emily had done, but the reader is never able to fully understand Emily’s actions until the end of the story.

Faulkner’s story relies on the fact that the reader does not find the meaning of the story until the very last paragraph. This is also true in Carver’s story. In Faulkner’s story, the reader is told of many events that seem absolutely ludicrous when they are shared, such as Emily’s buying the arsenic (par. 34), and her reclusiveness (par. 47). By mid-story, the reader begins to believe the townspeople’s opinion of Emily—She’s plain crazy. However, the reader is finally allowed to share the epiphany with the narrator that Emily was not crazy, just frightened of the idea of being alone. Only then can the reader realize that killing Homer and keeping his body in her bed was Emily’s twisted way of never being alone (par. 60).

In Carver’s story, the reader fully understands the main character. In the story, the reader gets insights into the narrator’s view on the blind man. the reader can tell by the narrator’s comments about listening to the blind man’s tapes (par. 5) that the narrator dislikes the entire idea of the blind man being a part of his wife’s life because the narrator feels the blind man in not “normal.” The first person narration allows the reader to watch the narrator’s progression into the realization that his preconceived notions of blind people were incorrect. At the closing of the story, the narrator shares every detail of his epiphany with the reader (par. 130-136).

The author’s choice of point of view in the stories, “A Rose For Emily” and “Cathedral,” enable the reader to fully experience the epiphanies of the narrators. Without those choices of point of view, both stories would lose their deep felt meanings. Although both stories have different point of views, both author’s chose the point of view that would best enable the reader to “experience” the story.