Looking Beyond the Surface at Raymond Carver's Cathedral

Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” is a short story that unfolds through the perspective of Bub. The story begins by depicting Bub’s narrow mindedness and as the story progresses it becomes clear that his perspective shifts after an encounter with his wife’s blind friend Robert. It is through this encounter that Bub has an epiphany. It is his jealousy towards Robert and intoxication that debunk his preconceived notations and highlight the connection between him and Robert. It is only after his epiphany that he is drawn out of this obliviousness and gains insight. Bub’s wife, his smoking, and drinking are key elements in breaking apart his bias and as a result he is enlightened.

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.

The narrator is pre-judgemental towards all people who are blind, whether or not he has met them. He believes all blind people are the same as those he has watched in movies. The narrator perception of the blind is that they “moved slowly and never laughed” and when they went out “they were led by seeing eye-dogs” (Carver 104). The movie industry creates a false image of the blind, which leads to the narrator’s assumptions. However, the blind are not all the same, just like how everyone else in the world are not the same. People are designed to be different in their personalities, thoughts, looks and much more. The narrator’s ideas of Robert are based off of false conceptions and this changes his attitude towards Robert. The narrator already has strong feelings towards Robert before meeting him

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.

It is easy to judge individuals based on our crooked misconceptions. Sight is a useless physiological sense if one is unable to view/perceive things on a deep, meaningful level. Due to this, individuals tend to allow other relationships to trigger personal insecurities within. One must be capable to share a vision with others to achieve enlightenment and self-awareness. In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the author utilizes various rhetorical devices to convey the importance of perception and sight.

“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.

In the short story, Cathedral, by Raymond Carver, the author uses imagery, symbolism and narrates the story in first person point of view. The Cathedral’s main theme is being able to identify the difference between being able to look and/or see and it is portrayed through the main characters role in the story. Carver uses a unique style of writing which gives the short story a simple way for the reader to understand the story’s theme.

As soon as the story begins, we are told that the narrator is not happy about the upcoming visit from his wife’s blind friend, Robert. The narrator states “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit,” “[Robert] being blind bothered me”, and “a blind

His further ignorance about the blind are focused in on Robert since he is aware of his upcoming visit. Hearing the marriage stories about Robert from his wife the narrator cannot realize how a woman could love a blind man, "It was beyond my understanding. Hearing this, I felt sorry for the blind man for a little bit. And then I found myself thinking what a pitiful life this women must have led" (508). This ignorance and immature understanding of relationships overshadows his attitude toward Roberts visit, unwanted and condescending. His attitude toward the blind man seems to change though before and furtherly during the connection they make as they draw the cathedral together. Although there is no evidence that the narrator's overall ignorances and prejudices are gone from the experience, it is very clear however that he does come to some sort of revelation and enlightment, "My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything" (515). Because what the narrator draws is a cathedral it is only assumable that this enlightment that the narrator experiences has to do with values of Christianity, in this case it would be a realization of equality and treating people with love, little is said about the effects this revelation has on him.

Lives are diverse. Every being that passes by on the street, at school, at work, anywhere lives a completely unique life different from any other individual. Each person that one could meet has attended different schools, travelled to different places, and lived under different circumstances; they all pass by in an instant without a second thought or even a passing glance. These several diverse experiences sculpt diverse individuals with diverse thoughts, opinions, dreams, and motives. However, in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” the narrator must converse with an individual that lives an extremely dissimilar life from his own. A blind man, friends with the narrator’s wife and a recent widower, has come to live with the narrator for a while. This sudden change in the narrator’s life does not come easy because of his inherent arrogance and prejudice. Nevertheless, the blind man remains polite and shows the narrator how similar, yet still different their lives are through example as well as an explicit exercise where he holds the narrator’s hands while he draws a cathedral in order to “see” what the cathedral looks like. To assist the reader in fully grasping the impact of this breakthrough in the narrator’s life regarding perspective and various types of human realities, Carver employs a large number of stylistic elements to enhance his writing.

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.

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.

Through his abundant comments, the narrator expresses his judgments and misconceptions about people and the articulation of emotion. In other words, what the narrator thinks and says defines his wrongful ideas about the world. He admits that his “idea of blindness [comes] from the movies” and, therefore, expects the blind to “[move] slowly and never [laugh]” and be “led by seeing-eye dogs” (Carver 209). Because he lacks day-to-day interactions, he relies solely on popular culture, and rather than basing his expectations on real people, he forms stereotypes. Moreover, as a result of his limited experience, the narrator is unenthusiastic, bothered, and even distressed by Robert’s visit, confessing that “A blind man in [his] house was not something

A person’s ability to see is often taken for granted as it is in "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver. Although the title suggests that the story is about a cathedral, it is really about two men who are blind, one physically, the other psychologically. One of the men is Robert, the blind friend of the narrator’s wife; the other is the narrator-husband himself. The husband is the man who is psychologically blind. Carver deftly describes the way the husband looks at life: from a very narrow-minded point of view. Two instances in particular illustrate this. The first is that the husband seems to believe that the most important thing to women is being complimented on their looks; the second is