Shalonda Barber
Joey Flamm Costello
COM 131
Missing Possibilities; The words we wish we heard
It takes work, very hard work to continue to grow as a couple throughout many of life’s challenges. Sometimes things just seem to evolve during a season of stress, tension, or overall difficulty. From one partner’s point of view, the change may come out of nowhere. One day everything will be great, the next day everything changes. This can lead to a breakdown in how couples communicate with one another. In Cathedral by Raymond Carver and Hills like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway it is obvious that no relationship is prefect. Some relationships can become very complicated, at times progresses. Carver’s and Hemingway’s stories show that the lack of communication can be detrimental both psychologically and emotionally to a budding or established relationship between two people.
In Cathedral, we learn that the husband and wife are not on the same page emotionally. Through the point of view of the narrator, he shares that “Every night I smoked doped and stayed up as long as I could. My wife and I hardly ever went to bed at the same time” (40). The narrator does not even consider their bedroom as his…“In my wife’s room, I looked around. I found some ballpoints in a little basket on her table” (42). In most marriage going to bed in different rooms of the home is often looked as taboo and a sign of a failing marriage.
Hemingway’s story also shows a couple that are happy in the beginning stages of their relationship. However, due to unforeseen circumstances have become unhappy with one another. Unlike in Carver’s story this couple is not married, but they too are already facing the effects of being in unhappy relationship. In a relationship most couples find it difficult to have the tough conversations. Often one may feel that they are not being heard and understood. The woman asks her boyfriend “And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy” (115). She...