Blog 4 Carver, Steinbeck

If you were to read Cathedral by Raymond Carver and The Chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck without a preset mindset of looking for or expecting symbols these short stories could be very confusing. Each story ends in such a way that the reader has to really think about what they just read and how everything fits together. In Cathedral, Raymond Carver uses symbols in his story, such as blindness and the cathedral at the end of the story. In The Chrysanthemums, John Steinbeck also uses symbols, such as Elisa’s gardening costume and the chrysanthemums. Both of these stories use of symbols helps to add depth and give a better understanding of the story as a whole.

Carver wrote in such a way that the reader did not gain a full understanding of the symbols until the stories end. When looking at the blindness of Richard throughout the story, it is easy to assume that it is a symbol. This is seen in the first sentence of the story when it says, “This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night.”(174). The issue is that you are unable to understand what it is a symbol for until the end of the story. It is seen that blindness symbolizes that just because you can see does not mean you have sight. It is sight that does not use the eyes but goes beyond the visual.  

Blindness ties in well with the next symbol, which is the cathedral. The cathedral symbolizes the process of realizing a lack of sight and then gaining true sight. The narrator tells Richard, “You’ll have to forgive me … But I can’t tell you what a cathedral looks like. It just isn’t in me to do it. I can’t do any more than I’ve done…The truth is, cathedrals don’t mean anything special to me. Nothing.”(182). This shows that physically seeing something or someone does not lead to understanding. The cathedral representing true sight and understanding can be seen in the last few lines of the story when the narrator says, “My eyes were still closed. I was in my home. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything. ‘It’s really something,’” (183).

John Steinbeck’s use of symbols in The Chrysanthemums was easily identifiable. The first symbol was Elisa’s gardening costume. The costume showed Elisa was a very strong woman. All of the clothing Elisa was wearing was masculine and illustrates a lack of feminine qualities. One part of her costume that is used a lot were her gloves, “She wore heavy leather gloves to protect her hands…” (416). Later Elisa, “…took off a glove…pulled on the gardening glove again.” (416-17). Her feminine side comes out when she starts to take parts of the costume off, gloves and the hat. Another symbol was the chrysanthemums themselves. They represented all that Elisa has joy and happiness in. When the tinker brings up the chrysanthemums, “The irritation and resistance melted from Elisa’s face…Elisa’s eyes grew alert and eager…”(418-19). These symbolized what Elisa truly wanted her life to be full of.

These stories would lose a lot of the strength behind their meanings without the symbols. The stories could not leave as much of an impact on the readers if they did not have the symbols. They would have been like reading stories in a newspaper with no deep meanings behind them.