People who have a duplicitous nature not only have a hard time making up their mind, but they also have a harder time avoiding temptation. They have not yet made up their mind about what type of person they want to be, and so when illicit opportunities come, they provide a stronger temptation than they do for people who are committed to ethical behavior. Connie has learned to sneak around as a result of her relationship with her parents, and this lack of ethical commitment makes her a vulnerable target for Arnold Friend.
The only escape that Connie has from her mother comes when she is allowed to go out with her sister. Because Connie’s mother has not established any reasons for her restrictions that resonate with Connie, once Connie goes out, she sneaks across a road to eat with boys. The problem that arises is that the only positive feelings that Connie experiences come when she is enjoying this escape. As a result, she wants it more often, giving Friend an opening.
Connie’s father works a lot, giving an older predator like Friend a chance to work his way into her fascination, if not affection. Even though Friend’s attentions are creepy to her, Connie clearly needs positive male attention. As a result, when Friend comes to the house, she can’t send him away like someone with a more positive connection to her father might.
On an unconscious level, Connie enjoys the power that living duplicitously gives her. As a result, Friend’s arrival at her house is thrilling in addition to frightening. Even though Friend does not appear to literally be able to come in the house, he is able to use fear and intimidation to get her out, but there appears to be a baseline level of thrill that takes her out the door.
When Connie heads to Friend’s car, she knows that she is not coming back. However, that does not appear to be a completely negative impression. Her home life is not happy, and she has used sneakiness to form a double life that she can now enter. The consequences, though, appear dire.
Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”
Many people who lack confidence gain a sense of self-worth from controlling and managing other people. This is the truth with the narrator in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” who appears to get his entire self-concept from the control he can exert over his wife. As a result, the relationship she has with her blind friend threatens him, although this does change over the course of the story.
At the outset of the story, the narrator is worried about the arrival of her blind friend, Robert, because they had a prior friendship that ended with Robert touching her face, a gesture that threatens the narrator with its intimacy. Also, Robert’s own wife has just passed away, which (in the narrator’s mind) creates an emotional need that his own wife might end up fulfilling. To make himself feel better, the narrator ridicules Robert because he never even got to see his wife.
Robert and the narrator bond in a way that is unexpected during Robert’s first meal at the house. Everyone drinks and eats a significant repast; when Robert appears to be tired, the narrator turns on the television against his wife’s wishes; he and Robert also share marijuana; this solidarity against the narrator’s wife appears to be important in overcoming the narrator’s fears.
Eventually, a cathedral comes on television, and the narrator cannot describe it adequately for Robert, and so Robert suggests that they draw it together. When Robert puts his hand on the narrator’s and they draw together, they build a bond of understanding; when the narrator closes his eyes to keep drawing, he realizes that his “eyes were still closed. [He] was still in his housebut [he] didn’t feel like he was inside anything” (Carver, web). The narrator has reached a new understanding as well.
Now that the narrator has stepped outside his own perspective into that of Robert, he is able to develop the confidence that comes from empathy. He is no longer worried about Robert and his wife, because he is no longer self-centered. The loss of his self-centeredness also opens him up to the possibility of change in his own life, a change that will come after the story ends.
ZZ Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
When Dina goes to college, she immediately runs into problems as far as socialization goes. As an African-American on a mostly white campus, she does not feel like she fits in. The strategies she uses to isolate herself include eating ramen in her dorm room instead of going to the dining hall and acting abrasively toward everyone she meets.
Heidi represents a seismic shift in the narrator’s life, as she awakens her identity as a lesbian, at least unconsciously. It is the narrator who starts things off in the back of a restaurant, as the two women spray water at each other, and the narrator takes off all of her clothes. This starts a relationship that is along the narrator’s liking, as they are always in her room and never out anywhere.
It is Heidi’s declaration that she is “out” at a campus event that leads the narrator to push her away. The narrator has chosen not to engage in society in any way, including establishing her sexual identity, and now Heidi has done this in a way that cannot be taken back because of its public nature. This leads the narrator to shut off all contact with Heidi.
Ultimately, at the end of the story, the narrator is waiting for Heidi to come back to her and tell her to “Open up” (Packer, web). This is an interesting play on words, as it not only asks the narrator to open the door but also to make herself emotionally vulnerable, a choice that seems much more difficult for the narrator than getting up and opening the door.
Being an African-American is already problematic enough for the narrator. When it turns out that she is a lesbian as well, she completely shuts down, unwilling to accept the effects that such an identification would bring for her. Already marginalized for her skin color, the prospect of her further marginalization is more than she can bear, which is why she pushes Heidi away.
Works Cited
Carver, Raymond. “Cathedral.” http://nbu.bg/webs/amb/american/6/carver/cathedral.htm
Packer, Z.Z. “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/06/19/drinking-coffee-elsewhere
