Margaret Atwood Cathedral Point Of View

Although point of views in both Margaret Atwood’s “Death by Landscape” and “cathedral” by Raymond Carver give us the perspectives, feeling, thoughts, observations, and understanding of the protagonist in each story, in general the third-person limited omniscient point of view used in “Death by Land scape” is more reliable than the subjective first-person point of view used by Carver in “Cathedral”. While we have access to how Lois and Bub, main characters in “Death by Landscape and Cathedral” think, our understanding of the other characters is limited as we never get a chance to view events from their perspectives. I suppose, because in “Death by Landscape” the story is narrated by a third-person outside the story, we get a broader

perspective of the story and have a certain distance from what happens inside the story. While “Cathedral” is narrated by the first-person inside the story, thus we are taken much closer to the protagonist’s mind which gives the story a kind of immediacy.

To stay focused on the protagonist in short stories, as one of the key features, the use of third-person limited omniscient point of view in “Death by Landscape” and first-person point of view in “Cathedral” are techniques employed by both authors to narrate the stories from the eyes of Lois and Bub, the main characters. However in both of the stories we do not deeply understand the minor characters’ feelings, thoughts and actions. This limits our judgements for these characters. For example, in “Death by Landscape”, we never know what goes on in Lucy’s mind when she is walking up the steep path with Lois. Or what kind of conversation goes on between Robert, the blind man, and Bub’s wife while she is driving Bub from the depot to the house? What did she do when she met him at the depot? So, in both techniques, the two stories leave us with unanswered questions in our minds.
The use of first-person point of view gives us a closer understanding of emotions being experienced by the narrator.

In “Cathedral” Raymond Carver, with a conversational tone, employs this point-of-view to reveal the narrator’s character. Bub’s character shifts from being prejudicial at the beginning to a more empathic by the end. At the beginning of the story the narrator seems to be uncomfortable because his wife has invited her friend, a blind man, to stay in their house for a night. We feel that the narrator has a clear resistance towards the blind man. By choosing the first-person point of view, Bub’s sense of prejudice is well understood by readers. For example, when her wife told Bub that Robert, the blind man, “touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose-even her neck!” or when her wife is asleep on the sofa and “her robe has slipped away from her legs, exposing a juicy thigh,” the narrator expresses his sensitivity to Robert’s presence sitting close to her wife. I think that since the story is happening in one location, more specifically in a living room, and at the end within Robert’s hand closed over Robert’s, using the first-person narrator is a good choice in order to take the reader as close as possible to the protagonist’s mind. Unlike “Cathedral”, the use of third-person limited omniscient point of view in “Death by Landscape” gives the reader a broader perspective, and the more objective view of the third-person narrator makes readers feel the events, thoughts and characters from a bit of a distance. Because the events in “Death by landscape” is narrated as flash backs of Lois, now an old woman, it already gives the reader the sense of a distance from the

scenes.
Both first-person point of view and third-person limited omniscient point of view are ideal for short stories as they focus on the protagonist. I would say the way readers imagine the scenes could differ in the two points of views. In fist-person point of view readers can imagine and looking at scenes from somewhere inside the narrator’s mind, while in third-person point of view, scenes are seen from outside. I get a sense that, by looking at the story from outside, there is more room for judgement.

Bibliography:

- Doris Lessing, To Room Nineteen: The Norton Anthology of short fiction, Richard Bausch and R.V. Cassill, 8th Ed., London, 2015, P.863-886