Imagery In Mary Oliver's Poem, Cathedral

Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” is a story about a nameless man, who is the narrator, his wife, and his wife’s friend Robert. Robert is a blind man that his wife met many years ago while working in Seattle when she was married to her first husband. In the story “Cathedral”, the narrator doesn’t admit it but he is jealous of the men from his wife’s past, such as her ex-husband and Robert. The narrator is also narrow-minded towards the blind community and towards his wife’s feelings towards her friend’s visit. The narrator can see perfectly, but the absence of his own self-awareness and insight makes him blind in many ways, especially when it comes to his own life and his marriage.

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

In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”, the short story is told by a character within the story. The first-person point of view gives us a transparent visual of an important time in the narrators’ life. The narrator, who is “un-named” in the beginning of the story, uses blunt, flawless and a particular choice of words. This gives us as the reader a deeper connection with the narrator. The narrator begins this story by taking us through the changes he go through with the uneasy feeling of having a blind-man coming to his house to visit.

He makes this clear in the opening paragraph of the story where he says “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. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (Carver 1). The narrator dismisses Robert in the same manner a white racist may dismiss an African-American. His prejudice, or any prejudice, is preconceived based on superficial qualities rather than actual experience or reason. It is evident the narrator can’t see beyond Robert’s disability and is judging Robert because of a characteristic that makes him uncomfortable. This unconscious placement of Robert into an atypical category prevents him from seeing Robert as an individual. The narrator does not see Robert as a whole person, but solely as a blind man. Part of what makes the narrator emotionally blind is this

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.

In the narrative, the author writes the story in first person point of view through an unnamed narrator which enables the reader to visualize, experience, and perceive a deeper insight into his mind. The story commences with the narrator speaking directly to the audience appearing closed-off and narrow-minded. His wife has an old friend named Robert, who happens to be blind, coming to spend the night. Right away, the reader can sense how the narrator comes off as self-absorbed. He`s only concerned about how Robert’s visit will affect him and is inconsiderate about the strong bond Robert and his wife have built over the years. The narrator also lacks self-awareness when he found himself thinking “what a pitiful life this woman must have led.” (Carver 3) The woman being Beulah, Robert`s recently deceased wife, who the narrator belittled as she married a blind man and now she “could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one.” (Carver 3) Not realizing that with

“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.

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

The narrator from Raymond Carver’s ‘Cathedral’, lived a clouded state of mind where his thoughts kept him from reaching the pellucid reality. Through the beginning of the narrative, the narrator expresses his harsh and judgmental opinions about blindness- which represents his incapacity and closed-mindedness to see beyond him. Later on his perspective is changed thanks to a sudden events. The narrator, which has no given name, is bothered by the impending visit of his wife’s blind friend, Robert. The narrator’s wife used to work for Robert from which they developed a relationship and inspired the wife to write poems about it. They, the wife and Robert, have maintained a constant communication through mailed tapes. All of these added up more to the narrator’s dislike for Robert. For example, when the narrator express his desconstest towards Robert’s disability: “And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies” (‘Cathedral’, Raymond Carver). Here the narrator’s narrowness and lack of sympathy is palpable. He is simple and superficial. Lives in a 2D way, is incapable of bearing a thought outside the box, and explore the depths of life in general. He is unhappy with his current work position but does nothing to change that fact. That’s until Robert’s visit. This is changed once the narrator gets to know Robert and Robert opens the narrator’s mind to life seen through another pair of eyes. For instance, after dinner is over, the narrator and Robert are watching a documentary about cathedrals. Suddenly, the narrator wonders if Robert has any knowledge of how cathedrals look like. There is where their journey begins. Robert ask to the narrator to draw a cathedral for him and request the narrator to add specific details (people, etc.). “So we kept on it. His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over

In reading, Carver’s, short story, “Cathedral” and Mary Oliver’s, poem, “Singapore”, both writers use imagery as an influential role. The authors also use figurative language to explore the mysteries of life. In “Cathedral”, the first words are “This blind man” (Carver 28), a narrator, who’s only voice, is heard in the story. The narrator has a visit from his wife’s dearest friend Robert (who is blind), Robert’s wife has died. Just as, Oliver’s, “Singapore”, there is a business woman also the only voice heard in the story. She is between flights using a restroom; her first words are “In Singapore, in the airport” (Oliver 937). Oliver does this so one can image a restroom in the airport. Likewise, Carver’s and Oliver’s, character reveals the challenge of misconceptions in society, but through self-awareness brings out in sight.

In the poem “Singapore” by Mary Oliver, there is a very important lesson of social acceptance. The poet speaks of encountering a woman in an airport bathroom stall, cleaning an ashtray in the toilet, and the disgust that she first feels towards this woman and her job. The speaker does however, express that she moves past the judgment that she first feels towards the woman in the stall. She imagines parts of nature and wishes to put the woman in a beautiful place in life. In this poem, the poet uses imagery, connotation, metaphor and symbolism to describe what she is really seeing compared to what she is imagining and would like to see.

A visual media example, that falsely portrays blind people and negatively influences Bub’s perception of blind people;"[i]n the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed” and “[s]ometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs"(Carver 108). The narrator sees blindness as a handicap, but he discovers that Robert lacks sunglasses, and he receives help from people instead of dogs (Carver 111-113). In addition, Bub’s receives negative influence from print media as he states, “I remembered having read somewhere that the blind didn't smoke” (Carver 114). The narrator learns that Robert lives like everyone else because he worked in a “county social services department in Seattle,” his wife recently passed away, he wears a beard, dresses well, eats normally and smokes” (Carver 108, 111-114). Although Bub receives his knowledge from audio and print media his negative opinions of blind people come from false portrayals in media, however Bub and Robert each learn a valuable lesson through Carver’s use of art media

Not only is he blind, but he is also getting extra attention from his wife, even before she met him. The narrator only refers to Robert as “the blind man” throughout the entire story, even after he becomes more comfortable around him. This shows that the narrator does not even want to use Robert’s real name, meaning that he does not think of him as Robert, a friend, but just some blind man. The narrator is also jealous of Robert because his wife gives him extra attention, and has shared intimate moments with him. “In this poem, she recalled his fingers and the way they had moved around over her face. In the poem, she had talked about what she had felt at the time, about what went through her mind when the blind man touched her nose and lips” (Carver 86). This makes him jealous that his wife still thinks about this moment, and how the blind man has touched his wife in an intimate way. “Robert arrives, and the narrator’s jealousy worsens because his wife shows the blind man extra attention. Carver undercuts that jealously with humor” (Bugeja 1). The narrator does not act too serious until he finally reaches his epiphany when he is drawing the cathedral with the blind

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.

As the story continues it exposes the many things that the husband fails to realize. For example, the husband neglects to recognize that Robert can feel. Robert commented about the train ride from the city that he’d "nearly forgotten the sensation" (1055). The husband does not understand that what blind people cannot see they can experience by feeling and hearing. The husband does not see what is underneath the skin or what is behind a face. The husband sees people and things at face value; he doesn’t look beneath the surface. In contrast, the blind man "sees" things with his ears, his hands, and his heart. Robert does not let the fact that he is handicapped affect how he perceives people and the things around him. Carver illustrates this when the husband observes, "The blind man has another taste of his drink. He lifted his beard, sniffed it, and let it fall. He leaned forward on the sofa. He positioned his ashtray on the coffee table, then put the lighter to his cigarette. He leaned back on the sofa and crossed his legs at the ankles" (1057) He did this just as anyone could have done. He doesn’t let the fact that he is