Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Birth-Mark, Raymond Carver’s Cathedral, and R

Nathaniel Hawthornes The Birth-Mark, Raymond ships boats Cathedral, and RandallKenans The Foundations of the Earth illustrate how self-assertion undermines intimacy and individual power and humility enhances those qualities. In each story, characters with parochial worldviews regain people who challenge them to change. Other perspectives are avail sufficient if they are able to let go of their superior attitudes. For example, Hawthornes protagonist, Aylmer, believes he has the ability and amend to create perfection. He views a birthmark on his wife, Georgiana, as exhibit of a flaw that must be removed no issuing what the cost. His assistant, Aminadab, (an earthy alter-ego) remarks, If she were my wife, Id never part with that birthmark (Hawthorne 531). He does not say, Id let it be or Id tolerate it, but rather Id never part with it. This interpretation is so antithetical to Aylmers that it cries for inquiry. What is it that you are thinking, Aminadab? or What is it ab pop out this birthmark that I find so ugly that you would measure? Aylmer does not ask these questions. Arrogance shuts him down. One needs humility in order to consider alternative points of view. New ideas do not forecast Aylmers mind and he does not develop. His arrogance culminates in the shoemakers last of Georgiana. In the other two stories, however, the characters mature by humbly fount to diverse perspectives, thus gaining knowledge and individual power. 1Raymond Carvers short story Cathedral opens with a narrator whose wife has invited a blind friend to spend the night. The narrator depersonalizes the man right discharge the bat and repeatedly throughout the story by referring to him, not by name, but as the blind man (Carver 513). He admits that hi... ...h. On the other hand, arrogance stifles adepts growth by shutting out different perspectives. One is left with nothing except what one started with ones mind becomes a closed box of stifling inflexibility or a Pandoras b ox of anger and blame. Sometimes arrogance leads to a fate like the one Georgiana and Aylmer experienced in Hawthornes short story.Works CitedHawthorne, Nathaniel. The Birth-Mark. Reading Literature and Writing Argument. Ed. Missy pack and Alan Merickel. Fourth ed. Boston Longman, 2011. 527-38. Print. Carver, Raymond. Cathedral. Reading Literature and Writing Argument. Ed. Missy pack and Alan Merickel. Fourth ed. Boston Longman, 2011. 513-23. Print.Kenan, Randall. The Foundations of the Earth. Reading Literature and Writing Argument. Ed. Missy pile and Alan Merickel. Fourth ed. Boston Longman, 2011. 149-61. Print.