Cathedral For A Blind Man By Ralph Ellison

The story follows the narrator and his wife who has invited her old friend to stay at their home because his wife has just passed away. The friend, Robert, is blind and the narrator’s wife worked for him as a reader ten years prior. They remained close and kept in touch by sending audiotapes to one another, recounting what was going on in their lives. Robert’s blindness makes the narrator uncomfortable and he does not look forward to his visit, even though it is quite important to his wife. The three spend a somewhat awkward evening together and the narrator become more comfortable with Robert as the night progresses and as his wife falls asleep. The narrator gains some compassion for Robert and attempts to describe what the cathedral on the

299). This shows that the narrator doesn’t know too much about the blind and is very stereotypical of them. The blind man and the narrator soon get together in which the narrator is asked to draw a cathedral with his eyes shut. Not only does he close his eyes, he keeps them closed after finishing the drawing. “My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything” (Anthology pg.311). This line said by narrator makes the reader believe that he may take things for granted and may just go about his day without noticing much.

In the beginning the narrator is un-named, we read the story as thoughts within his mind. His actions gives-off a sense of jealousy. He’s bothered by the former relationship the blind-man and his wife has had in the past. He is blunt and honest with (us) in telling how he feels about the situation. “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me.” “A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.” The narrator gives us the introduction to the life event. He tells us about his wife and how she met the blind-man. In short, she formally worked for him, reading him things when she lived in Seattle for a summer. The narrator mentioned when the blind-man touched around his wife face and her current marriage with her childhood sweetheart. Her husband at the time was in the military –industry, which caused her to have to move a lot. She and the blind-man kept in touch by sending voice recorded

Upon an initial surface reading of page 158 of Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man, one could be lead to believe that it was simply a crowded subway and Invisible Man was simply pressed up against a lady who does not take good care of herself. However, if one were to read this much more closely and actually figure out the context presented in this passage, one could see that Invisible Man is being held against his will by circumstances surrounding his race (African-American). Reading this passage in such a way, one would be able to understand how being packed next to someone who is unappealing could relate to racial or ethnic oppression.

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is a story about an unnamed African American man trying to find a place for himself in white America. Throughout his life, he believes that his whole existence solely depends on recognition and approval of white people, which stems from him being taught to view whites as superior. The Invisible Man strives to correspond to the values and expectations of the dominate social group, but he is continuously unable to merge his socially imposed role as a black man with his internal concept of identity. In the end, he finally realizes that it is only up to himself to create his own identity without depending on the acceptance of whites, but on his own acceptance of himself. Invisible Man represents the critical

The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is a story told from the first person point of view. The protagonist – who remains nameless – is speaking from the present but looking back on his past. In the first chapter, he talks about his grandfather, a freed slave, and his death. He talks about how his grandfather, someone who lived a quiet life, spoke in such a hateful way. The narrator, who now lives a quiet life just like his grandfather, remembers the words he said as he was dying, “agree ’em to death and destruction,” speaking of how the black community would “destroy” the white community. The words his grandfather said still haunt him, however, he insists on living a humble and quiet life. In fact, in his high school graduation speech he

The blind man and the narrator differ on their views of the world. The blind man takes advantage of life by making friends and learning new things. The narrator sees the world superficially. He does not find deeper meanings in life and values appearances over lessons. Towards the end that changes. Once the narrator views a picture from the blind visitor’s perspective, he sees the world in a new way. “My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside

In almost every story there is a meaning, whether that meaning is obvious or not is up to the readers’ interpretations. In some stories, that meaning hides behind a character, how that person acts, thinks, or express themselves and how they change throughout resembling growth. In Raymond Carver’s “The Cathedral”, the unnamed husband narrators the tale of his wife’s old blind friend Robert coming to visit after not seeing each other for years. They had remained in contact through audiotapes, but the husband seems to not understand the significance of their relationship, showing distaste with the visit for the majority of the story, due to his uncomfortableness. In this story, the writer displays his tale and its morals; by using the narration of the husband; Carver shows that there comes to be more meaning behind this bitter man that meets the eye, which argues the fact that perhaps this unlikable narrator is truly the antihero.

In Cathedral, by Raymond Carver, a blind man guides the narrator towards an epiphany: he needs to see situations and people in a deeper way, rather than just from a materialistic point of view. In the beginning of the story, the narrow-minded speaker is originally opposed to having the blind man, Robert, stay in his home. Because the narrator realizes that there is a nothingness in his life, he eventually grows to admire Robert’s ability to have faith in people, relationships, and the world even though he cannot see. When the narrator closes his eyes while the two men are drawing a cathedral, his spiritual growth in the story becomes apparent to the reader and to himself because he notices that by drawing with such passion, he has begun to

In this man’s case, he had simply never met a blind person before; although, he confides, “A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (106). He is ignorant to the reality of living without sight as he has only a vague notion of the concept from movies. Yet, after the narrator’s wife’s blind friend, Robert, suffers the loss of his wife, Robert comes to visit them. The very idea of having this stranger in his house frightens the narrator and creates a schism between him and his wife. Finally, Robert arrives at the house and is treated to a warm welcome from the wife and some awkward common courtesy from her husband. As the night progresses, the wife gets tired and falls asleep leaving the two men alone. The television drones on about cathedrals as they sit in uncomfortable silence together. Soon curiosity gets the better of the narrator and he wonders how great an understanding of the religious monuments Robert could possibly have. After regurgitating the facts previously spouted by the television program, the blind man suggests they draw one. The husband agrees and as the drawing nears completion he’s asked, with his eyes closed, “‘Take a look. What do you think?’” To which the narrator replies, “‘It’s really something’” (115).

The short story “Cathedral” displays how the husband emotion towards the blind man shifts throughout the beginning to the end of the story. The husband who is the narrator of the story is jealous of his wife’s friend who is a blind man. The husband bluntly tells the reader about his true emotions of how he feels about his wife being friends with a blind man. “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was from the movies” (Catherdral, 271).

My father once told me in life there are subjects and objects. He went on to describe objects as someone who is utilized as a tool and a does not have a drive force on its own. On the other hand, subjects are able to make decisions on their own. Just like modern society some people leads, and others will follow. Subjects will conditionally generate their own ideas and realize these ideas rather than just be assigned tasks that question their beliefs. The author Ralph Ellison illustrates it best. Ellison’s realistic fiction Invisible Man perpetuates the manifestation of manipulation over the minorities in this society. As the narrator embraces every identity he has been given, he starts to become more independent, and a leader in his

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

In Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," the husband's view of blind men is changed when he encounters his wife's long time friend, Robert. His narrow minded views and prejudice thoughts of one stereotype are altered by a single experience he has with Robert. The husband is changed when he thinks he personally sees the blind man's world. Somehow, the blind man breaks through all of the husband's jealousy, incompetence for discernment, and prejudgments in a single moment of understanding.

I felt from the beginning of the short story that I was going to be interesting. In the opening pages, the narrator is unhappy about the blind friend of his wife is coming to visit him. Why would the narrator be so unhappy about him coming to their house? When all of them are in the house the wife makes the situation unawkward where the narrator does make it awkward. When the wife falls asleep the blind man, Robert, takes advantage of the situation. I feel like Robert wanted to smoke pot with the narrator to get him to fall asleep. Since they were watching TV, it was convenient that a cathedral came up on the TV screen. Robert has the narrator grab a piece of paper so that they are draw a cathedral together. The narrator follows hand over