The Power of the Mind

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A weakness does not make a man weak. It is the man who chooses to allow a weakness to make him feeble. Faced with two different dispositions the characters, Robert, from Cathedral, and Prufrock, from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, handle life’s obstacles with two different approaches. Robert, a born blind man, doesn’t allow his inability to see stop him from seeing the world. His blindness actually allows him to “see” and understand people better then if he did not have a visual impairment. On the other hand, Prufrock was born with no physical enablement, but he allows his small frame full of insecurities to make him a weaker man. He does not have the strength to endure the outside world because he is stuck living in a pitiful self-loathing world.

Robert is a strong man who does not allow his visual impairment to stop him from having a real life. The narrator tells us that he works for a social-security department. The fact that Robert has a job like this lets the reader see that he is a hard workingman. When the narrator listens to his wife and Robert catching up he learns that Robert has actually done a lot of things in his life. This is discussed when the narrator recaps, “Robert had done a little of everything, it seemed, a regular blind jack of all trades.” (Page 83) His disability doesn’t hold him back from being successful. Robert does need more assistance then others in his position. He needed to hire someone to read his cases to him, which is how he meets the narrator’s wife. Robert appreciated everything that the narrator’s wife did for him and built a relationship with the narrator’s wife. This is established when the narrator says, “They became good friends, my wife and the blind man” (Page 77). The formulatio...

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...attempt to sing to him and lure him in like they would a brave sailor. He knows in his life he is just like a Shakespearean Fool. A man who over thinks and their presence are scarcely welcomed. His repugnant thoughts leave him unable to face the world or even open up and allow himself to see the world as it truly is. He just ends up paralyzed by his own thoughts, unable to attend a social event because he deems himself unworthy.

The power of the mind can create a hero or slowly kill a man from with-in, and it is up to the individual to choose the direction of the mind.

Works Cited

Carver, Raymond. Cathedral: Stories. New York: Knopf, 1983. Print.

Elliot, T. S. "T. S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Washington State University - Pullman, Washington. Web. 29 Mar. 2011. .

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