`` Cathedral `` By Raymond Carver

Sometimes we have to look beyond what we see on the outside to understand something more deeply. In the short story Cathedral By Raymond Carver, the narrator has an attitude of being selfish, and jealous through the story. The narrator’s wife invites a blind man, Robert, to come stay in their house for a short time while the man visits family members of his own wife who recently passed. The narrator is not enthusiastic because blind people make the narrator uncomfortable, mainly because the narrator has no real experience with the blind. In addition, to his uneasiness with the blind the narrator is uncomfortable with the relationship his wife and the blind man have. The wife and Robert, the blind man, have maintained a close

When the narrator’s wife tells the narrator that Robert recently lost his wife, he thinks that it is a tragedy that Robert’s wife was “a woman whose husband could never read the expression on her face” (Carver 70). This proposition sounds atrocious to the narrator, because he and the other men of the other stories are “used to determining their masculinity through the eyes of other men” (Kimmel). Moreover, the insecurity of the male narrator is demonstrated by his apprehension of Robert, for whom his wife once worked. The narrator is clearly uncomfortable having the Robert in his house. Although he claims that this is because Robert is blind, it is rather obvious that it is due to the fact that the narrator fears that Robert is a rival for his wife and thus, will usurp his masculinity (Benson). However, the narrator soon realizes what it really means to be blind. As a result, he no longer feels threatened by Robert and therefore is not insecure about his masculinity. In fact, when the narrator’s wife falls asleep on the couch with her robe open and showing “a juicy thigh”, at first, the narrator “draw[s] her robe back over her” (Carver 71). However, after he glances at the blind man, and realizes that the he is no longer an intimidation, he “flip[s] the robe open again” (Carver 71). In other words, the narrator does not care that his wife probably would rather not be showing “a juicy thigh.” He would only consider the decency of his wife if he felt the another man was threatening his masculinity. Moreover, once the narrator is no longer insecure, he is actually able to connect with Robert, without fearing that Robert will steal his wife. The narrator agrees to help Robert understand what a cathedral is. Because the narrator’s insecurity is only present when the narrator believes that Robert will emasculate him, the occurrences of the story

Everyone at one point has judged a book by its cover. In the short story, “Cathedral”, Raymond Carver creates a narrator who bases off ideas and assumptions about blind people from movies. The narrator has never interacted with a blind person before the day where his wife invites her friend, who is named Robert, to stay. The narrator and Robert have never met, but the narrator has a strong dislike towards Robert before meeting. The narrator’s closed-mindedness and misconceptions leads him to judge Robert, however after a few hours of interaction, the narrator learns more about him and grows to have a new perspective about people not being who they think they are.

As soon as the story begins, we are told that the narrator is not happy about the upcoming visit from his wife’s blind friend, Robert. The narrator states “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit,” “[Robert] being blind bothered me”, and “a blind

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

Prejudice is an issue that is present in communities around the world due to diversity in race, religion, sexual orientation, lifestyles and physical disabilities of others as well. However, sometimes it just takes a life changing moment for one to realize that he or she should not discriminate against others just because of their appearance or beliefs. In the story “Cathedral”, author Raymond Carver writes about a man who is prejudging towards his wife’s blind friend, Robert, who will be visiting the couple. At first the narrator, or “Bub” as Robert nicknamed him, does not like the idea of Robert staying there because he is blind. Once Robert arrives, “Bub” does not really make an effort to get along with him; they had dinner together

After a while of drinking and talking Robert and the husband sat down to smoke a little bit of pot and watched television when a cathedral comes up and the blind man wants the husband to explain what it looks like. That’s when the narrator could not do

The narrator (Bub) is characterised as being closed minded, and has a negative personality. He sits on the couch, smokes weed, drinks scotch and goes to bed. At the beginning of the story when Robert comes for a visit, the narrator is rude. The narrator doesn’t see people pass their physical appearance. He doesn’t look inside. The narrator says” I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me” (3). The narrator’s character makes him blind to the beautiful things in our world. The narrator is jealous of the connection between his wife and the blind man. He makes jokes about bringing Robert bowling. The narrator is jealous, and only focuses on the fact that he touched her face. He doesn’t see the deeper connection they have. He is blind. This is clear when the author writes “She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her nose, even her neck“(3). He also thinks about the blind man as a stereotypical blind man. He doesn’t seem to understand that there’s more to every blind man than a cane and sunglasses. He looks at people only on the outside. He thinks that the blind man can’t have a real connection. When Robert tells the narrator and his wife about his wife’s death, “I found myself thinking what a pitiful life this woman must have led” (4). Both Robert and the narrator are blind. The narrator is blind to the world. He can’t see people more than how they look on the outside. Throughout the story, he has a very flat tone. When they were talking about the blind man wife’s death, or when his wife attempts to commit suicide, he reduces the whole experience as her throwing up. He doesn’t sympathise with the blind man’s wife’s death or his wife’s attempted suicide. He doesn’t try to look at people on a deeper lever, rather he looks at the surface of every problem. He

The narrator didn’t like the blind man because of the way that his wife described what he did to her before she left and married her childhood sweetheart. He wanted to know why the blind man wanted to touch his wife’s face. As Carver quoted, “She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose – even her neck!”(62). He wasn’t sure how she let the blind man touch her face if he couldn’t see anything. The way that he reacted when his wife told him that she wrote poems about the blind man and he was slightly jealous because he wishes that his wife did the same thing for him since they were married. I think that the narrator was more jealous of how his wife and the blind would always send each other tapes based on what happened in their lives. As quoted, “She told him everything, or so it seemed to me” (Carver 63). He felt isolated from his wife because she told the blind man mostly everything and maybe there was a chance that the blind man was easier to talk to despite everything that happened to her. The narrator felt like he wasn’t good enough or wasn’t the type of person who was easy to talk to when it came to his wife. The way that narrator talked about the blind man was as if he envy him for the person that he was and the person his wife consider him as a best

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

This seems to unsettle the husband, as he notices that his wife has a stronger connection with Robert than they have in their marriage. The husband is blind to his wife’s feelings and needs in their relationship, and this lack of communication between them has affected their marriage. His wife wrote a poem about her experience with the blind man touching her face, and he brushed it off by stating that, “[He] can remember not thinking much about the poem” (33). The blind man however acts as an outlet for the wife to vent about her feelings which forms a close bond between the two. Robert can understand the speaker’s wife in a way that the speaker clearly is not able to. The narrator mentions that he believes Robert’s wife, Beluah, must have led a miserable life because she, “could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loves one. A woman who could never go on day after day and never receive the smallest compliment from her beloved” (34). He believes that the blind man’s wife must have suffered due to his inability to see her, yet the narrator has never even truly seen his own wife. Robert’s friendship with the speaker’s wife is what his own marriage is lacking due to not being able to recognize that his wife needs an emotional connection with him.

The story opens with the narrator giving a background of his wife and Robert. Immediately, it is easy for the audience to form a negative opinion about the narrator. Within the first paragraph of the story he says, “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me” (Carver 33). This exemplifies his pre-formed opinion about Robert even though he hardly knows anything about him. He clearly is uncomfortable with the fact that Robert is blind, mainly based on his lack of exposure to people with disabilities. The narrator is very narrow-minded for most of this story, making it easy to initially dislike him.

The doubt the narrator had towards blind people his further evident when the blind man arrives at his house. On seeing the blind man for the first time in the parking lot, the narrator noticed that the blind man had a beard, but he thought that it was unusual. This is evident when the narrator remarks, “This blind man, feature this, he was wearing a full beard! A beard on a blind man! Too much, I say” (Carver 4). The skeptical view, the narrator had towards blind people is further brought out when the narrator was being told about the death of the blind man’s wife.

Through the author's use of diction, more aspects of the narrator's personality are revealed. Simply from word choice, we learn that the narrator is prejudicial towards others, and jealous of other men's relationships with his wife. When facing the situation of Robert coming to town to visit his wife, the narrator blatantly expresses that "a blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to" (Carver 209). This repeated substitution of "blind man"

The authors  selective writing style is through first person and we are told the story through the narrator. He is married to his wife, who they are both not given names throughout the story. The wife has an old friend, who is coming down for a visit due to the tragic event of his wife’s passed due to cancer. Throughout the story, the narrator struggles with insight of different lifestyles, prejudiced opinions towards the blind man, and attempting to secure a way to adjust his life for a favor his wife inquired. The narrator will soon realize that be needs to maintain an open mind to other people’s lifestyles and needs to sees struggle through a different perspective.