BEST OF WEEK: Cathedral.

We read the short story "Cathedral" in class. By the end of our discussion about it, as a class we reached the conclusion that language can create limitations to the conveying of experience. The narrator of the story purposely uses ambiguous language (i.e. "it's really something") to avoid putting his epiphany in concrete terms. In concrete terms, the sense of an epiphany is no longer presented, merely a series of events, and it would also put the narrator out of his normal voice, dissolving the credibility of the story.

There isn't a language in the world that would be able to convey the experience of epiphany, of sudden realization. And yet the language is needed to guide the reader towards the epiphany. Perhaps purposely ambiguous language can provide insight because it reflects the natural ambiguity of life itself. Then it wouldn't be the language that is limiting in the expressing of metaphysical experience, but the tendency to mentally put concepts in terms of time and space. For example, in the previous sentence, i'm describing ideas/concepts, and i have them put in time and space, which act like a physical sort of canvas, or box, into which something purely conceptual is being placed into.

In my writing, I could use ambiguous language to aid in the expression of my experiences as well. This would take much work however, as if done poorly, the effect is lost, and there is nothing concrete to back up the failed technique.