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Pastiche Model (wiki page)

Page history last edited by PBworks 14 years, 7 months ago

Subject: English

Level: A2 Standard

Literary option 3: Short Stories – American voice

- Raymond Carver , “Cathedral”

Title: Weapons

Area of Communication and type of text: Pastiche

Purpose: Experience the style of writing by Raymond Carver

Audience: Literary audience

 

Rationale:

For this task, I wanted to imitate the form and style of Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” to tell another story, which the theme is similar to Cathedral in providing the first person narrator with an epiphany at the end of the story, which includes a change of value and attitude in life. I have done this through imitating the tone and sentence structure, and the structure of the piece. An example of the tone is “I wasn’t so passionate about meeting this man”, which is similar to “A blind man in my house is not something I look forward to” in “Cathedral”. The structure of the piece, including the content, is very similar to “Cathedral”. The beginning of both stories talks about the background of the disabled stranger that the main character does not wish seeing, and how the main character’s wife is related to this stranger. As this stranger is the cause for the epiphany and change of attitude for the main character at the end of the story, the original attitude of the main character towards him is described at the beginning. This relationship between the attitudes of the main character towards life leading to him disliking the stranger forms a bright contrast with the point of epiphany at the end of the story. In my story, the main character’s original attitude was that “dying for one’s country is honorable, and running from war is cowardly”, and the one in “Cathedral” was that “blind men were boring, they never laughed, and they cause trouble”. These attitudes are both formed in the main characters’ minds because they have not experienced being a “soldier” or a “blind man”. A main message my story and “Cathedral” both tries to portray is that if you have not experienced something, you have no right to set values or attitudes against a crowd that has. 

               The major difficulty I met during this task was to compress an imitation of a story like “Cathedral” into such a short piece of writing. Although the form and style were imitated, a lot of details that could lead to a better understanding of the theme were cut out. 

 


 

 

Weapons

 

This man with only one leg, an old patient of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night. He called my wife from his parents’ in California. Arrangements were made. He would come by bus, and my wife would meet him at the bus stop. She hadn’t seen him since the Vietnam War 20 years ago. But they had kept in touch with the numerous letters and phone calls. I wasn’t so passionate about meeting this man. My idea came from the movies, that soldiers who survived but are disabled from wars were never the ones willing to sacrifice for their country. 

               That winter she graduated from medical school she needed a job. She joined the medical force to Vietnam. She said it was for saving American’s lives. One day she treated a soldier whose leg was blown apart by a grenade. He was the only survivor from a troop. She took care of him the whole winter - fed him, soaped him up, gave him cigarettes and lit every one. On their last day she helped him up, and he took his first stand in two months. 

               When we first started going out, she showed me her yearly drawings of the soldier. The soldier had different poses and expressions in each of them. In the phone calls and letters she told him about these drawings and what he looked liked. She would tell him everything in her life, my life, her work, our new car and new house. He asked for a real copy of her drawings, so she framed one, boxed it and mailed it to him. Once I looked over her shoulder as she read an incoming letter from the soldier. I only saw four words, “so he was just”. But that was all I wanted to read.

               

               He came late at night. My wife drove off to pick him up at the bus stop that was a hundred yards from our house. As they sat in the driveway, they were looking at photos they took in war. They were laughing as they came in the house. My wife said, “I want you to meet Arnold. Arnold, this is my husband. I told you about his huge beard.” 

               I shook his hand and he said, “I feel like we’ve already met.” I nodded and smiled.

               My wife gave him a hand as we sat down on our new sofa. They started talking about old times while I kept silent. After a while, my wife finally turned and looked at me. She didn’t like what she saw. I glanced at her and started talking. 

               “So how did they help you recover? Make you exercise?” I asked.

               “What a question? Exercise?!” my wife said. 

               “I just asked.” 

               “They just made me lie there, massaging my injured muscles from time to time,” the amputee said. “I hadn’t done any real exercise since my injury. The last time was when I was running away from the grenade, but that was for a living.”

               “Ah, you ran.” I said.

               My wife glared at me. “Would you like to go to bed now, Arnold? Your bed is made up.” 

               “I’m having a nice time in this lovely sofa. I see a weapons collection on the wall. Oh yes, you were a weapon producer.” He got up slowly and walked towards the wall. He picked a rifle up.

               “Arnold?” My wife said, but he couldn’t seem to hear her.

               “Oh I remember taking this with me when I sprinted across the battlefield. I was the only one left, the others were all shot or bombed or stabbed, and this long M-16 almost caught one of the dead bodies and made me fall.”

               “They are honorable to die for the United States of America, and they should be paid the highest level of respect,” I said.

               “I am glad I wasn’t the - honorable one. When bullets fly right beside your earflaps and the weapons you produce are used to kill every second you wouldn’t want to be - honorable,” he said with a frown. He touched every part of the rifle, playing with every detail like a toy a child plays with everyday. His right eye was watery. 

               He picked up another few weapons, the M79 grenade launcher, M107 self-propelled gun, and the Nagant M1859 pistol. For each I explained the production processes, and for each he taught me how to operate them correctly and how efficient each is in aiming and killing. 

               I placed the grenade launcher on my shoulder. He said “That’s right, bud, just a little backwards.” He held my hand and placed it firmly where they were supposed to be. 

               He held the Nagant M1859 and froze for a few seconds. Then I felt someone locking my arms from my back, an arm around my neck, and a pistol pointed right at my brain. 

               I froze for a few seconds.

               “It’s really something,” I said.

 

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