Los Cuentos, pt. 1

Well, this week has been a rough one. I am hosting a fundraiser tonight, debate tomorrow, and somehow have to create a device out of straws that will miraculously save an egg from a nine meter drop. By tomorrow. Somehow, though, I found time this weekend to just finish up the rest of the short stories that I had to read. I found that I did not enjoy these as much as "How to Become a Writer," probably because I am either rushing to complete all of my work or because I just did not relate to them as well. Anyway, let's get to them.


Cathedral was by far one of the best short stories that I have ever read. The entire story is just extremely inspirational and I do not have a great way to describe it. Towards the beginning, it is clear that the narrator is extremely ignorant of the blind, what they are and what they do. It reminded me kind of how when a cripple is being rolled through a hallway and everybody watches him, they ask themselves questions about how they get around and how they do their thing. I mean, some of the things that the narrator asks his wife are simply simpleminded. I remember that when Robert entered the house, the narrator seemed like he was extremely nervous and did not know what to do. He eventually found a common hobby that both had: drinking. This led to the conversation that they had and the understanding of Robert. The understanding of each other was by far the most significant part of this story, and I really enjoyed it. I mean, it was not the narrator's fault that he did not know anything about the blind man; he asked many questions at first because he did not understand, but at the end they fully understood each other. Great story.


"Everything that Rises Must Converge" by Flannery O'Conner is the one that I am going to talk about. This story was the classic difference of how large minds think as to small minds. We have talked about this in my Social Studies class before. Convoy explains that every generation afterward is a little more liberal towards a main issue than the generation preceding them. In this society, for example, we are becoming more and more liberal towards gay marriage, and there has been specific evidence that demonstrates that we, as a society, are much more pro-gay now. This is the same idea in the story. The mother is small-minded, and thinks of herself of higher status than all blacks. This supports my point because she is the preceding generation, who are much more conservative and do not want to change their ideas. Her son, Julian, is the more liberal generation, who is open to communicating and sharing ideas with blacks and whites alike. The mother is too small minded and conservative to see what really lies beyond the "old world" she keeps talking about, and does not acknowledge that because the world is desegregated she does not have a higher status than blacks anymore. Julian understands where his status lies, and often is the liberal who sits next to blacks on the bus and talk to them. The last part of the story was important because it really demonstrated that Julian's mom does not have the status that she thought that she had, and the blacks really hit it into her (literally). So in sum, the story excellently depicted the difference between small minded people and large minded people.