"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet".
~Romeo and Juliet
What Juliet says may be true, but you still have to call it something. It has to be distinguished from "the flower" or "the plant".
In class we discussed the idea of bestowing names to demonstrate intimacy. In "Cathedral", we noticed that the wife and husband never refer to each other by name. Actually, we don't find out either of their names during the course of the story. However, both (the wife especially) refer t0 the blind man often by his name, Robert. I took this to mean that the relationships in the story were primarily represented by the use of a person's name.
This is an interesting way to show intimacy in a story, because although the wife and husband never have to say anything, the tension is apparent and is demonstrated by what they omit. The husband talks of how he waited to hear his wife mention him in her history, yet she didn't talk about how they met or anything like that, and he wasn't reassured that she cared for him. Their relationship is very strained- she didn't seem to care if he loved her or not, as long as he respected her friend, and they seemed almost to be polite strangers. It's certain that by the end of the story the husband and wife were closer to Robert than they had been to each other in a long time.
Names represent attention and care in this story, but I'm sure the principle works in other situations as well. Think about how often you use someone's name when you talk to them or ask them for something. It shows you're focused on them and the conversation you're having. Although I'm not suggesting this story is meant to be advice on how to treat someone, it's definitely an interesting thought- could your use of a name convince someone they're loved?
And if it did work that way, couldn't a lot of problems and doubts be solved?
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Lindsay, this is a very insightful post. On the one hand, it seems that names are insignificant in a relationship and that "love is blind", an idea represented in this quote from romeo and juliet. On the other hand, in cathedral, we see the importance of a name in a relationship. The lack of name usage between the husband and wife shows the distance between them and the lack of intimacy in their relationship. I remember hearing somewhere that the word a person likes to hear most is their own name. Personally, I think that using names in a relationship is very important because it gives a sense of identity.
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