This essay examines themes of self-discovery and personal transformation in three short stories: Michael Winter's "Archibald the Arctic," Raymond Carver's "The Cathedral," and John Cheever's "Reunion." Through close reading of each narrative, the paper argues that each protagonist undergoes a form of rebirth prompted by an antagonistic figure — a reckless brother, a blind dinner guest, and an alcoholic father. The essay explores how Gabriel English, the unnamed narrator in Carver's story, and Charlie each cling to flawed perspectives until a confrontational encounter forces genuine self-examination. By comparing the three protagonists and their antagonists, the paper demonstrates how discomfort and disillusionment serve as catalysts for meaningful personal change.
Michael Winter's "Archibald the Arctic," Raymond Carver's "The Cathedral," and John Cheever's "Reunion" all contain an element that invites readers to think about a journey toward self-discovery. Gabriel English, the central character in "Archibald the Arctic," has his brother to help him realize that he is wasting his life living according to false values. The narrator in "The Cathedral" needs to interact with a man who feels genuinely happy about who he is in order to acknowledge that he too could enjoy life. Similarly, the narrator in "Reunion" fails to gain a more complex understanding of life until his drunken father forces him to do so. All three characters experience something akin to rebirth and eventually realize that they need to change their perspective on life in order to feel good about themselves.
Each of the short stories contains an antagonist: "Archibald the Arctic" has Junior, Gabe's brother; "The Cathedral" has the narrator himself; and "Reunion" has the narrator's father. These antagonists each play essential roles in leading the central characters to feel that their perspective on life is flawed and that they need to get actively involved in restructuring it.
Winter focuses on portraying Gabriel as a young man who has trouble adjusting and who feels that his brother is the perfect model of how he wants to be in life. Even though Junior constantly gets into trouble, Gabriel fails to see that his brother is a slacker. The protagonist is blinded by his brother's ability to have fun regardless of the situation he finds himself in. It appears that Gabriel virtually wants to behave like his brother but is afraid to adopt such an attitude. He is apparently satisfied with simply accompanying Junior and enjoying the time they spend together. One could go so far as to say that Gabriel exploits Junior because he believes he will never be able to be like him.
Junior has a bad influence on Gabriel because he makes his younger brother feel that it is perfectly normal to engage in immoral behavior. Moreover, he makes it seem that people actually enjoy themselves when they encounter dangerous situations, and thus allows Gabriel to believe there is nothing wrong with supporting all of his brother's activities without protest. Gabriel's young mind fails to see things from a broader point of view because he is impressed by the sensational episodes that he and his brother share.
While Junior is a bad example for Gabriel, he is nonetheless effective in guiding him through life and in teaching him the difference between right and wrong. It is almost as if Junior unknowingly educates his brother by exposing him to the harsh reality of life and enabling him to understand that one must first experience pain in order to learn how to avoid it in the future.
Most people — and even Gabriel himself — considered him to be "the good son" (Winter 28). This points toward the idea that the protagonist was somewhat frustrated with that designation and felt that people did not believe he could ever do anything surprising. Junior managed to make his way in a society where Gabriel felt like a stranger, and this is probably one of the principal reasons the narrator came to regard his brother as an idol.
Carver's "The Cathedral" centers on a narrator who is frustrated by the fact that his wife has remained friends with people she knew before their marriage. He is extremely insecure and feels that his wife's decision to invite a blind man named Robert to dinner is thoughtless. It is difficult to determine whether he feels threatened by another man entering his home or whether he simply does not want his wife to have anything to do with her past — a past he considers more interesting than the life she now shares with him.
The moment when he meets Robert and learns how this man "sees" the world allows the narrator to change his perspective on life. He no longer feels it is important to maintain a defensive stance toward anyone he considers a threat. He also comes to acknowledge that he needs to abandon his rigid principles in order to truly appreciate life.
Robert is a person who succeeds in enjoying life despite being blind, and this is one of the principal things that leads the narrator to regard him as strange. In spite of his handicap, Robert does not hesitate to drink or smoke marijuana. The fact that he has a beard allows readers to read the connection between Robert and the narrator as one between someone who is very experienced in living and someone who is afraid to live. The narrator likely agrees to smoke cannabis partly to prove that he is man enough to do so.
It is not until the narrator sympathizes with Robert that he actually realizes how wrong it was to hate or even judge the man. In that moment he recognizes that his attitude toward Robert — and toward life in general — had been deeply negative. He virtually comes to differentiate between the person he is after drawing the cathedral with Robert and the person he was before that moment. It is almost as if he had two personalities, and the one capable of understanding life without paranoia emerged as a direct result of Robert's influence. The antagonist in this short story is none other than the narrator himself, as he is the person responsible for preventing himself from enjoying life and from seeing the goodness in others.
"Charlie's optimism collapses as his father's alcoholism reveals harsh truth"
"All three protagonists share stubbornness overcome by painful encounters"
All of the protagonists in the three short stories were somewhat aware of the problems they had, but they were unwilling to accept them. The fact that they each came across episodes that made it impossible to deny their feelings had a strong effect on how they later came to perceive life. Through their encounters with antagonists — a reckless brother, a contented blind man, and a self-destructive father — Gabriel, the narrator in "The Cathedral," and Charlie are each compelled to abandon false comfort and engage more honestly with the world around them.
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