False Perceptions In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

The author’s diction illustrates Douglass view of the world around him and his feelings about a community created by fear and injustices. “The wretchedness of slavery” provoked Douglass to “trust no man”, which gave him the sense of feeling “perfectly helpless.” Being imprisoned in slavery for so long caused Douglass to witness the evils of man and experienced the cruelty of being alone. Even more when the “ferocious beats” showed their “greediness to swallow” it left Douglass “toil-worn and whip-scarred.” As time passed by Douglass’ desire for freedom has grown. However, when he does escape he puts himself in his own state of slavery that is run by fear. Douglass’ desires has not even freed him, but it also allowed him to live in life without

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.

Message: Douglass wants his audience, the American public, to know that he earned his freedom. Freedom is something that each of us must look for in order to be truly “free.” Through the personal experiences of his own life as a slave and his perseverance to become educated, Douglass shows us that it requires persistence and bravery to look for freedom. He also illustrates to the audience that there is no real end in this search for freedom until slavery is fully abolished.

“You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift-winged angel, and that fly round the word; I am confined in the bands of iron!” He compares himself to the boats. He depicts how the boats are able to move freely whereas he is held in lifelong bondage. It is evident that he also uses parallel sentences with antithesis. He conveys some sense of complexity in himself and a greater insight to his feelings. The exclamatory sentences intensify Douglass’s statements about his feelings as a slave which reinforces the author’s rhetorical

1.) Douglass spent so much time talking about the agreed upon points because he was trying to ensure the reader knew that every person, individually, is equal in this world; moreover, that we all should be treated with the same dignity and respect that is declared in the Declaration of Independence. " Are the principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?" (Douglass 316). He does not argue the main points of slavery because it is clear that slavery was wrong and should never occur again.

On page 56, Douglass exclaims,“‘You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip!’”(56). In his cry to the white sails, Douglass highlights the real horrors of slavery by using metaphorical comparisons. He uses kind and joyful words like “merrily” and “gentle gale” to describe the freely moving sails but dark and gloomy words like “sadly” and “bloody whip” to describe himself and his life. This dichotomy is an effective way in which Douglass may have changed the view of slavery in the minds of his readers.

Cathedral is a short story written by Raymond Carver in 1983, about a prejudiced man who meets a disabled man. Through “Cathedral,” it becomes clear that the visit of the blind man Robert in the narrator’s house may change the narrator from stereotyping to accepting disabled people; this illustrates Carver’s theme which displays human insensitivity through the narrator’s reluctance because of fear, then acceptance, and finally understanding of Robert.

The husband in Raymond Carvers “Cathedral” wasn’t enthusiastic about his wife’s old friend, whom was a blind man coming over to spend the night with them. His wife had kept in touch with the blind man since she worked for him in Seattle years ago. He didn’t know the blind man; he only heard tapes and stories about him. The man being blind bothered him, “My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to. (Carver 137)” The husband doesn’t suspect his ideas of blind people to be anything else. The husband is already judging what the blind man will be like without even getting to actually

In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass recollects being revolutionized from the years as a slave in the institution to the life of a free man in the world by attaining the extraordinary power and knowledge of literacy. In this pinnacle moment, Douglass declares and defines his presence and uses his extensive talent in communicative language to reach out and connect with his audience. During a time where it’s severely punishable to acquire these skills, Douglass’ looks beyond this, with his strong desire for freedom increasing as he comes to understand what awaits him on the other side. By liberating himself through literacy, Frederick Douglass, in The Narrative, recalls his transformation into a

While the only literal blind character in Raymond Carver’s Cathedral is Robert, the narrator exhibits his own blindness in a variety of ways throughout the story. In the beginning of the story, the narrator is close-minded about the blind man soon to be visiting him. He makes assumptions about the man with stereotypes such as blind people not smoking due to their inability to see the smoke. Even though the narrator “…knew that much and that much only about blind people,” he was soon proven wrong when Robert smoked a cigarette (39). This demonstrates the narrator’s blindness to Robert’s characteristics other than his lack of sight.

Frederick Douglass's narrative is an interesting and educative 1845 memoir of a former slave and orator Fredrick Douglas. The narrative explains the events of the author’s life as a slave since childhood until he escapes from the bondage of slavery. The story is divided into eleven chapters, each explaining important events in the life of Fredrick and his fellow slaves. Throughout the narrative, the orator explains various episodes of sadness and happiness in the lives of slaves who are always at the mercy of their slave. The author also expresses the hypocrisy White people who enslaved people while preaching the saving power of Jesus Christ. In the end, the author argues for abolition, and explains his major role in advocating for the abolition

“Cathedral”  is a short story by Raymond Carver. The narrator is the principal character. He has a negative personality. His wife is sincere, compassionate and a little controlling person. Robert is a secondary character.

What is freedom? To some people, freedom meant one allowed to enjoy one’s basic human rights that not be controlled by another person or institution and own some form of property. In the striving the restriction of African-American human rights, freedom also meant being treated as a human being equally. In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Fredrick Douglass, Douglass described his life experience of suffering as a slave reflected the crucial conditions of slaves in the South slavery of Eighteenth Century. By drawing from his own experience, observation, and knowledge of being slavery in his narrative, he not only exposing the brutal nature of slavery, but also showing readers self-consciousness and efforts and struggle for freedom of a black slaves.

The theme of “Cathedral” was a mystery to me until the very end of the story. The emotional feelings I had while reading the story change from the beginning to the end. The narrator projected a mixture of energy in tell the story, and at the end of the story it was still ambiguous. In the beginning the narrator acted very childish about the fact that Robert (the blind man) was coming to visit his wife and him. Even though his if fully aware of the details of his wife past he still became jealous with the idea of Robert coming to visit. The wife wasn’t happy with the way the husband reacted, nor was she pleased with him prejudging Robert wife who had passed without ever meeting her at all. When Robert finally came over and broke the ice between

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).