Malihe al-Sadat Banifatemi - MA n English Literature, University of Guilan
Behzad Barekat - Associate Professor of University of Guilan

The present article is an attempt to carry out a comparative analysis between Raymond Carver's Cathedral (1989) and Ebrahim Golestan's The Stream, The Wall, The Thirst (1351) in their deep structure. This paper analyzes only one factor of this structure which is 'anti-epiphanies' or abruptness or disconnections at endings. Most of Carver's and Golestan's short stories display clinching moments of revelation or realization that come usually at the end but in their fiction we are often left with 'anti-epiphanies,' where the realization, at least for the characters, does not come. Günter Leypoldt (2001) calls this technique, arrested epiphany ; that is, a type of epiphany identified by a distinct disparity between characters' feeling of realization and his or her lack of understanding what sort of insight it is providing. This article focuses mostly on the endings of the stories in these two short story collections to see how this realization or revelation is achieved. Reading Carver (1981) and Golestan (1351) for the issue of anti-epiphany, it can be concluded that they both share the same approach since the characters and readers are left frustrated at the end of their stories because of their lack of understanding of the realizations. Their stories end in abruptness or disconnections

Comparative Analysis, Anti-epiphany, Abruptness, Disconnection, Endings