Character Contrast - Free Essay Example

The characters that I will be comparing from the two narratives are Robert from the short story `Cathedral’ and the blind villagers from the short story `The Elephant in the Village of The Blind.’ Although the characters are similar in the physical disabilities that they portray, they are different in mindsets. Robert is blind but is seen to be more rational in thought than the blind villagers. The unnamed character with whom Robert interacts with is confused about many issues in his life, and his interaction with Robert changes many of these perspectives. The majority of the unnamed character’s fears and insecurities come from his wife’s poetry and the ex-husband who she had before marrying him. Through his insecurity, he is unable to enjoy life with his wife, and through his interaction with Robert, changes many of these perspectives. He can learn from Robert’s simplicity and contentment with life despite his situation, and it is through the effects that Robert had on him and his guidance that he draws a cathedral, which helps in calming him down.

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Comparatively, `The Village of The Blind’ is not as calm, collected, and in perspective, as Robert is. They experience an elephant, all from different angles, and instead of agreeing with each other on the parts that they felt, they disagree and argue on which one of them is right. They should have cooperated to confirm what each one of them had felt, and using the findings of each one of them, have listed characteristics of an elephant. Robert was presented with the same instance of uncertainty when he had to take care of the unnamed character’s insecurities, which he had never experienced before, and instead of disagreeing, found a working solution to the issues at hand.

Author’s Style

In `Cathedral,’ the author uses a minimalistic style to present their ideas. A minimalist style is one that provides minimum information on the subject matter and expects that the reader or audience will use their imagination to come up with the remaining pieces of information. Therefore, throughout the poem, the author provides crumbs of information, leaving the reader to come up with their interpretation of the same. This could have been done intentionally, for the reader to share the same experiences as Robert did in the novel. While he did not have eyesight, he still managed to `see’ things in perspective and even overcome his disability to help others to be able to see their problems from different angles than the ones that they initially saw them from, hence overcoming their anxieties and fears.

On the other hand, the author of `The Elephant in the Village of The Blind ‘uses description and descriptive language to explain their point. When the elephant wanders off into the village, the blind men get the opportunity to feel the elephant and, from their experiences, come up with their description and definition of the elephant since they could not see. Since the villagers could not see, they used their hands to feel and come up with their descriptions. They could not agree on whose description was correct since they all had different perspectives of the elephant depending on which part of the elephant they felt, smelt and heard the from the elephant.