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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. How does the narrator’s wife look at him when he turns on the television during the talk with the blind man after dinner?
2. What novelist was Raymond Carver’s mentor and teacher?
3. What term describes a movement where a literary or artistic work is set out to expose the essence or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts?
4. What does the narrator admit he does not believe in when discussing matters with the blind man late at night in the story?
5. At the end of the story, the narrator says, “I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was” what?
Short Essay Questions
1. What is symbolized through the television set in the story?
2. What does the blind man suggest when he feels the drawing is complete? How does the narrator respond?
3. How are the characters in “Cathedral” representative of Raymond Carver’s style?
4. How does the narrator describe Robert’s eyes in the story?
5. Where in “Cathedral” does the climax of the narrative take place?
6. What is signified by the narrator’s final lines in the story?
7. What does the reader learn about the narrator when he and his wife discuss their friends prior to the blind man’s arrival?
8. Where in the story does the protagonist undergo an “epiphany”?
9. Where in the story do you see the first elements of transformation in the protagonist?
10. Where does the rising action take place in “Cathedral”?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Define “foreshadowing” in narrative literature and discuss examples of foreshadowing in “Cathedral.” How is the topic of religion foreshadowed in the dinner scene and later explored in the ending of the story? What else does the author foreshadow? What purpose does this example serve in the narrative? Does it build suspense? Does it create humor?
Essay Topic 2
Discuss the theme of “rebirth” and the transformation of the narrator from the beginning of the story to the end. How do you think the narrator has changed from his interactions with Robert? Do you think this change is a good thing? Why or why not?
Essay Topic 3
Examine and discuss correlations between the biography of Raymond Carver and the narrative of “Cathedral.” In what ways do you think Carver resembles the narrator of the story? How is alcohol a theme in Carver’s life and in the story? How does the epiphany in the story relate to Carver?
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This section contains 926 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
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