Narrative Style in Literature

Paper Summary:

This paper compares and contrasts the use of point of view in "To Room Nineteen" by Doris Lessing and "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver. The paper describes the plots and the characters of each story and discusses and compares the narrative style in the two works. The paper then focuses on what the choices of narrative style portray about the story and how this affects the reader's perceptions.

From the Paper:

"Thus, even more so than having an affair, Lessing's wife realizes that she cannot go on living a double existence, one existence characterized by an absence of autonomous identity and one in a room by herself, in Room Nineteen. She is 'cheating' on her husband--with herself, by enjoying her solitude. Finally, Susan lies on the bed in her room, smells the sex of other people in the stale motel sheets and she chooses to annihilate herself, a scene that would be unbearably painful if the reader identified with her as completely the reader inevitably identifies with Carver's first-person narrator. Thus Lessing's use of a third-person narrator deliberately creates distance, and encourages the reader to see Susan as a case study that shows the limits of female existence as fully human beings with an identity beyond sexuality. Carver in contrast encourages the reader to identify with the narrator, as the narrator identifies with the blind man, because the story is about an internal shift that occurs within the narrator, and about a case study of humanity."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Carver, Raymond. "Cathedral." 1 Mar 2008. http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/cinichol/GovSchool/Cathedral2.htm
• Lessing, Doris. "To Room Nineteen." From The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Edited by R. V. Cassill. 4tth edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990.

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