Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” a story that entails a man’s epiphany about a misplaced prejudice, is narrated from the first person point of view to enable the reader to fully understand the narrator’s thoughts. However, in William Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily” just the opposite is true. In Faulkner’s story, the narrator has a limited third person point of view which allows the reader to dodge any emotional ties with Emily, the main character, and to form his own ideas about Emily’s actions. Both story’s meanings rely on the fact that the author’s choice of point of view gives the reader the ability to experience the narrator’s epiphany as the narrator does.In “Cathedral,” the narrator shares his feelings towards meeting his wife’s blind friend. This “emotional briefing” gives the reader a chance to “bond” with the narrator. The reader gets an insight into how the narrator thinks and feels, and , thus enabling the reader to understand and sympathize with the narrator. The reader is able to make assumptions of what the narrator might be subconsciously thinking. However, in “A Rose For Emily,” this is not the case.In Faulkner’s story, an onlooker tells of the peculiar events that occurred during Miss Emily’s life. The author never lets the reader understand Emily’s side to the story. Instead, the reader is forced to guess why Emily is as strange as she is. In the story, Emily had harbored her father’s dead body in her house for three days (par. 27). The reader is told of how the town looked upon what Emily had done, but the reader is never able to fully understand Emily’s actions until the end of the story.Faulkner’s story relies on the fact that the reader does not find the meaning of the story until the very last paragraph. This is also true in Carver’s ...
