Hirsch's Poem 'For The Sleepwalkers'

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.

Throughout the novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison works with many different images of blindness and impaired vision and how it relates to perception. These images prove to be fascinating pieces of symbolism that enhance the themes of impression and vision within the novel. From the beginning of the novel when the narrator is blindfolded during the battle royal to the end where Brother Jack's false eye pops out, images of sight and blindness add to the meaning of many scenes and characters. In many of these situations the characters inability to see outwardly often directly parallels their inability to perceive inwardly what is going on in the world around them. Characters like Homer A. Barbee and Brother Jack believe they are all knowing

In the memoir, Night by Elie Wiesel, it shows how Elie has went through many hardships during the time of the Holocaust because of his religion. During Elie’s time in the Holocaust he begins to lose faith. He struggle to maintain faith in a benevolent God. To convey is his message throughout the book, Elie Wiesel uses imagery. Elie is trying to explain the harsh conditions in the camps and how bad they are.

“You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day,”91:5.

Sleep—it's what divides the day and the night; the conscious and the subconscious; the aware and the unaware. It's image, then, is a powerful tool for polarizing such extremes. In his trilogy, The Oresteia, Aeschylus utilizes sleep imagery to divide between those who are aware and those who aren't. Though sleep's meaning changes throughout the plays, Clytaemestra is always able to use it to her aid. Her story accompanies a shift in a justice system that defines right and wrong. Throughout the trilogy, the meaning of sleep evolves from a clear division into a more indefinite one as the definition of right and wrong becomes increasingly ambiguous.

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 Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” the narrator is seen to show ignorance and bias towards blindness throughout the story, however towards the end he realizes his flaws and the difference between looking and seeing. From the beginning of the story to the end you can see a change within the narrator after his encounter with the blind man. At the end of Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” the narrator hopes to accomplish a change in his understanding of himself, and his experience with Robert flickers this change towards the end of the story.

The poet becomes increasingly uncomfortable as he begins to read about specific colors. The "jacket yellow in the green meadow" and the "red rooftops easy to spot in the valley" would hold significance for an audience with sight, but in the case of the blind man, they are worthless beyond their literal meaning (15-16). While the poet may have meant to convey a message to the reader through the red rooftops, his efforts were nullified by the blind man, and he fears that his work is now inadequate. Again, the poet appears to hesitate; he wants to "pass over" the "cathedral's ceiling," "the farewell wave," and "the album with the faces," yet he knows "it's not an option" (19-23). He feels guilty for making his poem so reliant on imagery, and the fear that he is inadequate as a writer continues to

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.

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 imagery and symbolism in the Cathedral show a transformation in the life of the narrator, who perceived the blind man has a threat to him, later learn the significance of humanity through the kindness and caring gestures of the blind man. Whereas the imagery and symbol in everyday use was the quilts, handmade by the narrator’s mother and sister representing the legacy of their family.

This imagery is used metaphorically to illustrate what a blind man would like to know in order to get a full vision of what is exactly going on.

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 Elephant in the Village of the Blind” shows us that in life, we frequently attempt to comprehend the world around us by the way we see it. Nevertheless, our understanding is limited by our experiences, knowledge, beliefs, moral systems, education, opinions, influence of others, etc. In this sense, we are metaphorically “blind”, as are the villagers. For this reason, some people in the story saw the animal as “a fringed rope” (line 13) and others as “a cool, smooth stuff” (line 14), which is clear juxtaposition. Moreover, when we are not familiar with something we are trying to define it, before fully understanding it. The clear moral of this parable is that we rarely see the things as they are, we see the things as we are.

The night symbolized death, and the walk was the person's journey to find their lost life. This poem was somewhat disturbing to me. I thought of a lost soul, thirsting to finish a mission that was not completed in life. Frost depicts death in a frightening manner with the contents of this piece of work.