There is a definite transformation in the narrator of "Cathedral" and "Sonny’s Blue." In "Cathedral" the visit of Robert, the blind man, after the drawing of the cathedral with the blind man and imagining it with his eyes shut the narrator leaves his eyes closed and gains an insight of freedom and liberation: "My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything." The narrator’s experiencing life from the blind man’s point of view and meeting him changed the narrator’s deeply and his outlook on life itself. In "Sonny's Blues" when the narrator sees Sonny performing jazz, he sees how Sonny is able to gain his freedom from music, and instead of judging Sonny he becomes understanding: "Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last,…." The narrator as a result developed the same "freedom" that Sonny gains through jazz, and through his music he "hears and feel" what Sonny has grieved and he feels the struggles he’s faced. Both narrators in "Cathedral" and "Sonny's Blues" undergo a transformation in their character using strong characterization ultimately seeing life through the eyes of another person.
Raymond Caver’s "Cathedral," narrator does not have a name, however, it could be said that he is Robert, the blind man friend’s husband, he drinks scotch and smokes marijuana. The narrator thinks it is okay to make fun of blind people, and tends to get complete cruel when he becomes jealous. Even though the narrator is not literally blind, he does have a lack of visualization and self-awareness in ways that makes him seem ignorant and he may even be blinder than Robert as can be seen by this statement "And then I found myself thinking what a pitiful life this woman must have led. Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one. A woman who could go on day after day and never receive the smallest compliment from her beloved." The narrator for James Baldwin’s "Sonny’s Blue allows the reader to see how Sonny's drug addiction affected him and those around him and like Carver’s "Cathedral" he has no name however based on the narration it can be said that he is Sonny’s brother. It's very important that we hear the story from someone else point of view as Sonny would have been an unreliable narrator for the story. All this being said the narrator without a doubt has his own prejudices and thoughts, and he does not have an utterly unbiased opinion. "He had been picked up, the evening before, in a raid on an apartment downtown, for peddling and using heroin." This is where Sonny’s drug use is introduced and there’s definitely no hiding of the fact that drug is very important in Sonny’s world.
In "Cathedral" it is as if the narrator is just, trying to keep his readers amused, giving details of the events openly and exactly as it occurred. It's convincing because he's retelling the story based on his own experience, without getting oversentimental. The narrator tells, without telling how you should feel about it. Under all the relentless lowbrow jokes about blind people, there’s an attitude of authenticity. He isn't down playing anything instead his intent on telling the unembellished fact. The narrator himself knows that he’s in a furrow, but feels like there’s nothing that can be done to get out. He never thought for a second that a blind man visiting his home for just a night would have shown him that the solutions to his problems were right in front of his very eyes, and all he had to do was close them. For the answers. Baldwin seems to have quite a bit of understandings for Sonny. He doesn't portray him as a drug addict but rather try to find the reasons for his problems. You see the narrator’s sympathy in this quote were Sonny himself gives an explanation as to why he felt like he needed to do drugs: "It's not so much to play. It's to stand it, to be able to make it at all. On any level." He frowned and smiled: "In order to keep from shaking to pieces." The mere fact that Sonny is a performer contributes more for a chance of compassion as Sonny as a lot to lose and had a much greater problem when he’s unable to play Jazz music on his Piano.
"Sonny's Blues" took place in Harlem in the early 1950s. The city of Harlem has great importance to the narrative because it’s one of the main reason that Sonny started to do drugs; as that was his only way of evading his environment, "There are people suffering from poverty, prostitutes who have been beaten up walk the streets, young men feel the weight of limited possibilities, and "find themselves smothering in their houses," This is a depressing place, It would seem if the streets of Harlem have a life of its own and contain an inborn threat that lives just underneath the surface. The two brothers sort of rewire after a very apprehensive few weeks during which they try to deal with their resentment towards each other. Drugs are a central part of the story, but it's also about family, music, and trying to overcome life's struggles "Cathedral" is set in the days when people were switching from black and white to color television, and when cassette tapes was the most advanced form of technology. The basic setting of the story is a middle-class home somewhere in New York and everything happened over a single evening possible in the late 1970’s to early 1980’s.
In James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," music is the dominant motivation of Sonny's life as it is the only thing that seems to give him a sense of freedom from his suffering: his addiction, growing up as maybe one of the black child, on his own and isolated from others, and the feeling that he has no one to love or anyone loving him or understand him. Sonny tries to articulate to his brother just how important music is to him: "Sometimes you'll do anything to play, even cut your mother's throat." He laughed and looked at me. "Or your brother's." Then he sobered. "Or your own." The narrator himself does not seem to know much about jazz, as he feels that it might just be men sitting and acting a silly while trying to make music. Unlike Sonny, who has music in his soul the narrator didn’t see it as that. As Sonny’s brother, the narrator’s job was to take care of Sonny, however he doesn't seem to know how to, especially in a way that would benefit Sonny. As luck would have it, the music that Sonny's brother listens created a barrier for then both as he knew nothing about how to interact with Sonny on a musical level. Even though the narrator did not completely understand jazz or the blues, and he might not know anything about the big names of the jazz and blues movement in music, he’s nonetheless able to understand Sonny’s just by seeing his connection to jazz.
Music was Baldwin’s way of bringing art into play in "Sonny’s Blue," but poetry, drawing, and storytelling was used in Carver’s "Cathedral" According to the narrator, his wife would write a couple poems each year to mark events that were important in her life, including the time Robert touched her face. The narrator himself is not very fond of his wife’s poems and even admits that he does not understand them. The narrator gains an insight in his very own life when him and Robert draws a picture of a cathedral, thus realizing for the first time that digging deeper is a great way to gain knowledge and extensive understanding of himself, "but I had my eyes closed. I thought I’d keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something that I ought to do." The blind man also grew an understanding from the drawing, he may not have been able to visualize what the narrator’s drawing of the Cathedral, but he shared the narrator’s eye-opening experience and he played a great role in that. The simple fact that the narrator felt the need to retell the story of his epiphany helps him make sense of his newfound understanding. He might not have fully comprehended what happened when he closed his eyes and drew the cathedral, but he knew it was an important experience.
When "Cathedral" is over, there’s a feeling as if something mystical has happened. Indeed, it has, but all within the margins of what reads a lot like reality. "Cathedral" builds around a familiar scenario: a dinner among middle-class, middle-aged people in a New York home. And seeing the unexpected in the apparently usual ordines is what realism is all about. Literary fiction depends a great deal on characters, and it's the characters that drive the story of "Sonny's Blues." This story is definitely about music, drugs addiction and family matter, but in the end all these thing contribute to the construction of really well-developed and fleshed-out characters. There's an intimate that goes in inside the characters, and it's their inner chaos that drives the plot. Sonny was indeed arrested and sent to jail for drug but that all seem minor to why he was doing drugs in the first instance. In the end the narrator was nice enough to send Sonny a drink at the bar, but the greatest achievement for him was his new understanding of his brother. It's true that a lot happens in this, but these events are really tools of characterization.