Don't cry for me, Raymond Carver

Today I introduce my American Lit students to two stories that always make me laugh or cry--"Do Not Go Gentle" by Sherman Alexie and "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver--and I sincerely hope that I can get through the discussion without dissolving into a big blubbering mess.

I hate crying in front of students. I cried in 2005 when I read a poem by David Citino to a class the day he died, but the poet had recently visited our campus and his death hit home. I cried the semester I kept teaching through cancer treatment and a group of students expressed their support with a particularly touching gift, but that year I spent a lot of time in tears.

Crying over a short story is another thing entirely, and today I get a double whammy. "Do Not Go Gentle" is hysterically funny as long as you focus on the image of poverty-stricken Native Americans chanting, singing, and drumming with the aid of an immense vibrator named Chocolate Thunder--and the happy ending helps too. Just don't think about the fact that it's set in a hospital ward full of dying children. I'm always amazed at how few students recognize the title as an allusion to the Dylan Thomas poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," so I start the class by getting someone to read the poem out loud. Okay young people, let's think about death!

And then let's think about despair! The unnamed narrator in Carver's "Cathedral" is so unpleasant at the start that I'm always amazed at how moving I find the ending, when the blind lead the blind into new insight and a sort of transcendence: "My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything. 'It's really something,' I said." It hits me right in the tear ducts every time.

But I can't teach while I'm blubbering so I try to breathe deeply and let Carver's words speak for themselves. Death and despair are essential to the human condition, but that doesn't mean we can't build from them something beautiful.