Short Stories: Thy Lenses to Reality

Just as a film is a moving collection of pictures we perceive as a continuous flow of events, life is a moving collection of snapshots based from our own memoirs. More often than not, when we present a picture of our life, it is accompanied by a story we hold dear to our hearts. Such is also true with short stories- "they are snapshots of the human condition and of human nature" which gives us the "rare chance to see ... more than in real life".

Reading William Boyd's Short History of Short Story, I found myself believing that with the evolution of man, there also evolved the story telling that eventually became a published literary work that we now call the short story. As much as it is a "predisposition of our minds", it all too simply augmented itself into a written form of story telling that possesses a "complexity of afterthought". Moreover, "something about their unique frisson escapes or defies analysis". This is one characteristic of a short story that I personally like because it fosters avenues to explore deeper interpretations of the story's theme. Somehow though, interpretations may differ because we offer ourselves subjectively to the kind of "picture" the author wants us to see but nevertheless, we are able to understand depending on how we are able to perceive.

This brings me to Raymond Carver's Cathedral and the totality of effect that it creates to the reader. The epitome of the story for me, which is reflected on the scene wherein the blind man asked the husband to close his eyes while drawing a cathedral encapsulated the irony in an aspect of my life. It created in me a deep sense of understanding that it doesn't matter if we are given the gift to see the world if we fail to look beyond what our eyes perceive. All of these things around us do not just exist for it is meant to lead, inspire and teach us in subtle ways as it may seem. After all, it doesn't take a blind man to show us the reality of the "human condition and of human nature" that we oftentimes fail to recognize.