Cathedral Raymond Carver Analysis

Being blind manifest itself in a lot of ways. The most harmful type of this condition may be figurative blindness of one’s own situations and ignorance towards the feelings of others. Within Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral,” the narrator’s emotional and psychological blindness is at once obvious. The narrator faces many issues as well as the turn-around experienced at the culmination of the tale are the main ideas for the theme of this story; and these ideas aid the narrator in eventually develop the character transformation by simply regarding the literal blind man in a positive light.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“Cathedral” by Raymond Carver is a story that shows the sense of sight in relation to vision, but it shows that the sense of sight requires a much deeper engagement. The narrator, who Robert calls “Bub,” is astonishingly shortsighted or “blind” while the blind man is insightful and perceptive. Bub is not blind, but Robert is. Therefore, he assumes that he is superior to Robert. His assumption correlates with his idea that Robert is unable to make a female happy, nor is he able to have a normal life. Bub is convinced his ability to see is everything. So, he fails to look deeper than the surface and is why he doesn’t know his wife adequately. However, Robert sees much deeper than the narrator, although he cannot look at the surface. Robert’s ability to look deeper helps him understand through his listing and sense of touch. Throughout Robert’s visit, the narrator reveals he is closed minded and exposes how he views life in general. Bub is clobbered and it brings him to the epiphany that his views about Robert are actually a mirror image of how he views his life. His epiphany is shown through the author's use of appearance vs reality, irony, and vernacular dialogue; which shows Bub’s preconceived notations, the connection formed between Bub and Robert, and how out of obliviousness Bub gained insight.

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.

Carver’s short story “Cathedral” is about a man and a woman who are married. The woman’s blind friend Robert, whose wife just died is coming to stay with them because he plans on visiting his dead wife’s relatives nearby. Robert knew the man’s wife because she worked for him one summer, reading to Robert. The wife and Robert stayed in touch over the years by sending tapes to each other, and letting each other know about what was going on in their lives. When the man hears Robert is coming over he makes idiotic comments about Robert’s wife and felt that Robert would be a burden on them because he is blind. The man and the woman proceed to argue over the situation. The wife tells her husband, “If you had a friend, any friend, and the friend came to visit, I’d make him feel comfortable” (Carver, “Cathedral” 34). The man responds to this by stating, “I don’t have any blind friends” (Carver, “Cathedral” 34). When Robert finally arrives, they converse, drink, and eat together. After, the wife goes upstairs, the man and Robert begin to smoke some weed together. While the wife was sleeping, they start watching TV together and talking. Robert asks the man to explain to him what a cathedral looks like because cathedrals came up on the TV. The man has trouble explaining it and cannot describe to Robert what a cathedral looks like. Then Robert asks the man to draw a cathedral with him. Robert request that the man close his eyes, and they begin to draw. This is where the story ends and it seems that this is when the man became aware of the difficult lives blind people live as he could not explain what a cathedral looked like, and he could not see his drawing.

The notion of possessing an intrinsic bias is introduced in Raymond Carver’s Cathedral. He highlights how perception can affect the way people interact and communicate with each other for the first time. In the short story, the narrator himself is blind to the emotions of the people around him and eschews any form of self-reflection until the very end. He is envious of the blind man, who shares an intimate relationship with the narrator’s wife. However, the blind man is depicted as insightful and personal. Carver discloses in Cathedral that Robert, the blind man, and the narrator’s wife had been exchanging audiotapes for years, sharing their experiences and difficulties with one another.

Reily Sharpe English 109 section 1 3/28/2017 Blindness in “Cathedral”: a comparison between the Narrator and Robert In all the stories covered so far this semester the one that stuck out the most to me was “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver. This was due to the complex concept of blindness and what it represents in the two main characters. Robert, one of the main characters, is an actual blind man who has lived in Seattle with his now late wife and after her death is visiting relatives nearby and wanted to visit the Narrator’s wife after not seeing her since she worked for him 10 years ago for a summer. The Narrator, the other main character in the story, is hesitant of accepting Robert’s presence, feeling put off and untrusting, only referring

In Raymond Carver’s story, “Cathedral,” we meet the nameless protagonist who is about to meet an old friend of his wife’s. The friend’s name is Robert and he is blind. In the beginning of the story, the narrator is uncomfortable with the idea of having someone with a disability, like Robert’s, in his home. He makes judgments about Robert and assumes that he is going to be like the blind people he has seen in the movies. We also learn the background information about how hife wife and Robert met and became friends. This story is a metaphor for not making blind judgements off of people before you get to know them.

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 act of looking is related to physical vision while the act of seeing involves an enhanced understanding of what it means to truly exist. In the short story “Cathedral”, the narrator is blind to appreciating the human experience until he meets a blind man who ironically becomes the one who teaches him how to see in a way he never knew how. The author Raymond Carver uses symbolism within this story to reinforce the theme of blindness, and the difference between looking and seeing.

“Cathedral” by Raymond Carver contains many examples of irony, imagery, and epiphany. While maintaining a minimalist approach, Carver, uses evocative diction to assist the reader in visualizing the story through the blind man’s perspective. By using the bare minimum of detail, it allows the reader to dig deeper to find the underlying meaning, such as themes of alienation and loneliness ("Cathedral."). Overall, the limited point of view of the story contributes to the various units of style and the ability to create a vivid image in the readers’ head.

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).