What is it about a cathedral that makes this architectural structure so perfect for the story? Consider some of the information the narrator and Robert learn from the television show they have on, as well as what you already know about cathedrals. What does this story say about both the art of building a cathedral and the art of drawing a picture for a blind man?

Identify the figurative language in the following selections, and then label each as metaphor, simile, personification, apostrophe, metonymy, and so on. Work in pairs or groups to discuss their effects on the meaning of the passage and the ways in which they evoke a response from the reader.\

1. These boys, now, were living as we’d been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. (“Sonny’s Blues”)\
2. We dug in. We ate everything there was to eat on the table. We ate like there was no tomorrow. We didn’t talk. We ate. We scarfed. We grazed that table. We were into serious eating. (“Cathedral”)\
3. Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on. (“Ode on a Grecian Urn”)\
4. Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes / Blown by black players upon a picnic day. (“The Harlem Dancer”)\
5. England hath need of thee: she is a fen / Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, / Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower. (“London, $1802$”)\
6. It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough constantly to irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide — plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. (“The Yellow Wallpaper”)

What evidence is there of the narrator’s appreciation for the physical beauty of the African landscape? What does Lessing suggest when the narrator characterizes the landscape with a mixture of images of Africa and Europe, such as “the green aisles of the mealie stalks, the leaves arching like cathedrals” (para. $2$)?

Blindness is both a subject of “Cathedral” and a recurring motif. Consider the many different ways blindness is addressed in the story. How does each add complexity and meaning to the story?

Carver’s stories often focus on sadness and loss in the everyday lives of ordinary people. How is that both true and not true of “Cathedral”?

Why do you think the narrator gets back in touch with Sonny when his daughter, Grace, dies?

According to this poem, what potential does the artist have for improving society? How must the artist behave to make that potential become real and useful?

“Singapore” is an example of ars poetica, a poem that is also a treatise on the art of poetry. What comment does this poem make about the art of poetry? How does Oliver connect ars poetica to real life?

How do the themes of “Digging” find their way into the bog poems (“Bogland,” “Tollund Man,” and “Tollund”)?

O’Hara once described his work as “I do this I do that” poetry because his poems sometimes sound like diary entries. “The Day Lady Died” is from a collection called Lunch Poems. How is it more than a report of what someone did on his lunch hour?

What do you think Lawrence means by the words “vain” (l. $9$) and “glamour” (l. $10$)? How does your interpretation of the words add another level of meaning to the poem?

The poem begins with the word “Imagine” and moves from a description of the scene in Hopper’s painting to what was in the newspaper — real events from $1942$ — which the man in the painting might read the next morning. How does Sadoff honor the painting’s universal themes while also mooring it to a specific time in history?

In what ways has Stephanie’s writing style become more polished in the final draft? Consider word choice, sentence structure, and variety as well as accuracy of grammar and mechanics.

In Sister Wendy’s American Masterpieces, the art critic writes:
From Jo’s [Hopper’s wife] diaries we learn that Hopper described this work as a painting of “three characters.” The man behind the counter, though imprisoned in the triangle, is in fact free. He has a job, a home, he can come and go; he can look at the customers with a half-smile. It is the customers who are the nighthawks. Nighthawks are predators — but are the men there to prey on the woman, or has she come into prey on the men? To my mind, the man and woman are a couple, as the position of their hands suggests, but they are a couple so lost in misery that they cannot communicate; they have nothing to give each other. I see the nighthawks of the picture not so much as birds of prey, but simply as birds: great winged creatures that should be free in the sky, but instead are shut in, dazed and miserable, with their heads constantly banging against the glass of the world’s callousness.
Compare Sister Wendy’s interpretation to the interpretations of Sadoff and Ludvigson. What is your own interpretation?