Book Review : After This By Marcus Engel

While reading the book, I realized Engel really appreciated his nurse, Barb, for the way she treated him. She empathized, understood his needs, and always gave him privacy. One of the topics that Engel covered in his book was patient modesty. In chapter twenty, Engel talked about patient modesty and how his nurse made sure his guests were as comfortable as he was. I found her attitude really professional and admired the way that she handled the situation. She used her body as a shield and distracted his guests with the television while she was cleaning his wound. She had everything set before she starting and she finished attending to his wound quickly. Every time I 'm with an inpatient, I always try to cover them up because if they were conscious they probably wouldn’t want to be exposed.

In Chaim Potok’s book, The Chosen, blindness is a recurring theme. Although there are some instances of physical blindness, such as Billy in the hospital, most of the situations in this book are of the figurative sense. In these circumstances, the person has good physical vision, however, due to their previous experiences, they are not able to see the true situation.

Blindness is not limited to physical manifestation. In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” the figurative blindness is immediately apparent through the narrator and his shallowness, irrational jealousy, and egotistical personality. His dismissive behavior and ignorance towards the feelings of Robert, his wife’s blind friend, speak negatively of his character and reveals his insecurities. While the narrator’s emotional blindness and Robert’s physical blindness initially inhibits their bond, it eventually leads the narrator to an epiphany and the beginning of a character transformation. The different forms of blindness allow the characters to bond and grow over the course of the story.

The Story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver is about true blindness and the effects of emotional contact. Peterson studies the use of determiners, a and the, that refer to the blind man in the story and its effects to establish the atmosphere of the story. He states that the change in determiner seems subtle, but these subtle changes are significant because the changes show how narrator feel about Robert throughout the story. Nesset studies the sexual polices and the love lives in several Carver’s stories. He discusses how Carver wrote his stories based on less of love and more of love withdrawal. Also Facknitz addresses rediscovery of human worth and the effects of emotional touch by discussing three short stories written by Carver. He analyses each narration of the narrator and comments based on psychological manner. The story “Cathedral” suggests the meaning of true blindness does not only refer to physical disability; it refers to those people who cannot see the world from other’s perspectives and it can be overcome through emotional contact.

The more obvious ways he had changed was his intelligence, and the memories that slowly came flooding back to him after the surgery. He had went from an IQ of 70, to an IQ of 185 and counting. It had a tremendous impact on Charlie, for he was like a sponge, absorbing as much knowledge as possible, refusing to stop. He had exceeded the expectations, surpassing the IQ of the doctors that worked at Beekman University, and even the ones that constructed the experiment that changed Charlie’s life. He had managed to learn French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese, Hindi, and Japanese in an extremely short period of time. Before the surgery, Charlie wanted to partake in conversations with the college students about politics,

Carver is well known for his short stories and poetries. Among his works, “Cathedral” is considered one of the best, favorite, and most optimistic and the most developed. Carver’s story revolves around the theme of seeing and looking. Most people believed they could not live without cathedrals which brought them closer to their God. Similarly, people place so much importance to the physical eyesight and tend to think they can hardly live without it. Robert, a blind man, is invited to the narrator’s home and the narrator is shown troubled by Roberts’s disability. Later on, the narrator is amazed to see the blind smoking despite having even thought of helping him with his drink earlier on (Carver 516- 524). The latter brought to attention that as much as natural looking is essential, more essential is the ability to see or to visualize things. The writer explains that it might be tougher to be without eyesight; however, it is possible to live without it and make the best of what else one has, more so the brain. Visualizing brings out a better view of the significance of life and things surrounding us.

The use of symbolism such as the physical and emotional meanings of blindness can describe different meanings behind elements of the story. In the critical essay, the author discusses why an author might choose to make a character bling and what it means. Diane Andrews Henningfeld, the author of the critical essay explains, “clearly the author wants to emphasize other levels of sight and blindness beyond physical.” Blindness can be more than just the levels of physical sight and the author wants that to be understood. The author wants to emphasize and make it very clear that other levels of sight and blindness exist like not seeing the beauty in life and being blind to it beyond just being able to see with your eyes. The quote can feel something about the characters traits and how they can be so opposite from their physical abilities. This quote Conveys the facts. People can see in different ways. It is stated that,“although he is blind, he ‘sees’ how to get along with others in profound and important ways. By contrast, the narrator, although sighted, does not see how his isolation damages himself, his wife, and their relationship. He is

Planet of the Blind is brilliantly written by Stephen Kuusisto; he delves into his life story and gives readers exceptionally realistic descriptions of his experiences. Beginning the memoir, it is clear that Kuusisto is undergoing an obvious struggle between himself and his blindness. Born with retinopathy of prematurity, Kuusisto’s parents do their best to avoid his impairment. Due to this, Kuusisto describes himself as developing a sixth sense of giving off the perception that he could see significantly better than what he actually could. Throughout the memoir, Kuusisto chronologically tells of significant events during his childhood, teenage years, and adulthood and how he came to accept his disability and be confident in himself. During the course of these significant events, Kuusisto uses poetry to convey his emotions while also using the rhetoric of emancipation.

The beginning of the story presents the narrator’s wife working for a blind man one summer by reading, “stuff to him, case studies, reports, that sort of thing” (Carver, 34). She eventually extends an invitation for the blind man, Robert, to stay at their house after Robert’s wife had passed away. The narrator was not too happy about having a stranger stay in his home by stating, “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed” (Carver, 34). The narrator seems very timid about someone he had never met stay at his house who can see purely nothing. This gives off an impression that the narrator doesn’t want to have Robert stay with him because he will be a hassle to keep up with since blind people in the “movies” progress, “slowly and never

People who are blind face many different problems in accomplishing everyday activities and becoming an independent individual. Some are able to overcome this issue while others struggle through it in their lives. In “Helen Keller’s Address before the New York Association for the Blind, January 15, 1907” she makes an appeal to the audience that the blind should be helped and made independent so that they can stand up and support themselves. She uses pathos or emotionally packed words, examples and anecdotes and cites from a prominent source to convince her audience that the blind are not helpless, but they are in need of guidance from people who can see in order to live and thrive independently.

The idea of blindness in Carver’s Cathedral gains additional meaning throughout the story as we learn more about the character Robert and the blind man himself. The story begins in first person, depicting Roberts disdain for the blind and his smallness of character. As a juxtaposition we are introduced to the blind man who is evolved in character, and has a substantially important relationship with Roberts’s wife. As the story progresses and Robert has more interaction with the blind man, he himself begins to evolve through time spent while his wife is asleep. As the story comes to an end, the blind man has affected the character of Robert to the point that his inward blindness has been exposed. This story shows that blindness does not necessarily

The individuals that were blind viewed their disability as a liability. In the first video, the girl felt restricted because she didn't know how to operate in the real world. In the second video, the girl felt very overwhelmed when she was in the big store trying to find different things. In the third video, the family felt like they didn't know how the were supposed to live their own lives with their son's disability. However, each situation adapted and learned how to live life in this way.

The narrator does not find joy in learning, does not have close friendships, and superficially judges the world. According to his wife, he has no friends. “Every night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep”. He has a monotonous life. He is also afraid of the blind man and does not know how to interact with him. The blind man’s eyes creep him out. “I’d always thought dark glasses were a must for the blind. Fact was, I wished he had a pair”. He judges the man based on his look instead of his personality. Even before he met the man, he fixated on the blindness. He also feels pity for

The story “Cathedral” demonstrates that lack of sight does not necessarily prevent one from perceiving things as they are, or live their life to the fullest. In the story, a middle-age blind man, who is a friend to the narrator’s wife, and used to be her boss at one point, visits the narrator and his wife. The narrator has never interacted with blind people before, and all he knew about blind people was what he had seen on television. Blind people are stereotypically portrayed on television as slow moving, dull people, who never laugh. Based on this perception, the narrator was reluctant to meet the blind man and doubted whether they were going to connect. This is evident when the narrator states, “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me” (Carver 1).

One reason why I think the surgery was a bad idea was because, no one was expecting him as a friend. When Charlie got his surgery, some people at his work were realizing that Charlie had changed, and was starting to have feelings. “Look at him. His face is red.He's blushing. Charlie is blushing.Hey, Ellen, what'd you do to Charlie? I never saw him act like that before”. In this sentence Charlie's workmates realized that Charlie's operation was actually working, and that Charlie was