Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Birth-Mark, Raymond Carver’s Cathedral, and Randall Kenan’s The Foundations of the Earth

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark”, Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”, and Randall

Kenan’s “The Foundations of the Earth” illustrate how arrogance undermines knowledge and individual power and humility enhances those qualities. In each story, characters with parochial worldviews encounter people who challenge them to change. Other perspectives are available if they are able to let go of their superior attitudes. For example, Hawthorne’s protagonist, Aylmer, believes he has the ability and right to create perfection. He views a birthmark on his wife, Georgiana, as evidence of a flaw that must be removed no matter what the cost. His assistant, Aminadab, (an earthy alter-ego) remarks, “If she were my wife, I’d never part with that birthmark” (Hawthorne 531). He does not say, “I’d let it be” or “I’d tolerate it”, but rather “I’d never part with it.” This interpretation is so antithetical to Aylmer’s that it cries for inquiry. “What is it that you are thinking, Aminadab?” or “What is it about this birthmark that I find so ugly that you would treasure?” Aylmer does not ask these questions. Arrogance shuts him down. One needs humility in order to consider alternative points of view. New ideas do not enter Aylmer’s mind and he does not develop. His arrogance culminates in the death of Georgiana. In the other two stories, however, the characters mature by humbly opening to diverse perspectives, thus gaining knowledge and individual power.

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Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral” opens with a narrator whose wife has invited a blind friend to spend the night. The narrator depersonalizes the man right off the bat and repeatedly throughout the story by referring to him, not by name, but as “the blind man” (Carver 513). He admits that hi...

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...h. On the other hand, arrogance stifles one’s growth by shutting out different perspectives. One is left with nothing except what one started with; one’s mind becomes a closed box of stifling inflexibility or a Pandora’s box of anger and blame. Sometimes arrogance leads to a fate like the one Georgiana and Aylmer experienced in Hawthorne’s short story.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Birth-Mark." Reading Literature and Writing Argument. Ed. Missy James and Alan Merickel. Fourth ed. Boston: Longman, 2011. 527-38. Print.

Carver, Raymond. “Cathedral.” Reading Literature and Writing Argument. Ed. Missy James and Alan Merickel. Fourth ed. Boston: Longman, 2011. 513-23. Print.

Kenan, Randall. "The Foundations of the Earth." Reading Literature and Writing Argument. Ed. Missy James and Alan Merickel. Fourth ed. Boston: Longman, 2011. 149-61. Print.