On His Blindness by: John Milton (1655)

In the short story, Cathedral by Raymond Carver, the word “blind” acquires different meanings. The unnamed narrator is metaphorically blind; he can look at the surface of everything but not see what is inside. Although the narrator can listen to conversations, he cannot understand the deeper emotional context the conversation might hold, compared to Robert, who is visually impaired but can truly listen and understand. It is not until the end of the story that the narrator metaphorically opens his eyes, with assistance from Robert.

What is poetry? Is poetry about your feelings? Is poetry meant for you to deliberate or read between the lines? Elizabeth Alexander, a black educator that teaches poetry, believes that poetry is where you are your true self and finding yourself. In 2005, she published one of her poems called “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe.” She constructed the poem to speak to her students about her meaning of poetry. Poetry causes various emotions, various content, and based on various forms of realities.

The imagery used in this verse appeals to the sense sight. This helps the reader visualise what the writer is taking about. It also allows the reader to relate and connect more to the poem.

Throughout the poem the extended use of imagery by the writer allows the reader to relate and sense how we might view the world if we had lost our sight. We are able to see the world in a different manner. In addition to the imagery of the world we read about throughout the poem we also see the writer uses imagery to describe the characters. For example, the writers use of imagery for the description of the blind girl gives the reader a vision of a warm hearted girl, that views the world through all of her other senses. As described by the speaker upon their first encounter in lines 18-21

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.

Poetry is considered to be a representational text in which one explores ideas by using symbols. Poetry can be interpreted many different ways and is even harder to interpret when the original author has come and gone. Poetry is an incredible form of literature because the way it has the ability to use the reader as part of its own power. In other words, poetry uses the feelings and past experiences of the reader to interpret things differently from one to another, sometimes not even by choice of the author. Two famous poets come to mind to anybody who has ever been in an English class, Robert Frost and E.E. Cummings. Both of these poets have had numerous famous pieces due to the fact that they both

The use of symbolism such as the physical and emotional meanings of blindness can describe different meanings behind elements of the story. In the critical essay, the author discusses why an author might choose to make a character bling and what it means. Diane Andrews Henningfeld, the author of the critical essay explains, “clearly the author wants to emphasize other levels of sight and blindness beyond physical.” Blindness can be more than just the levels of physical sight and the author wants that to be understood. The author wants to emphasize and make it very clear that other levels of sight and blindness exist like not seeing the beauty in life and being blind to it beyond just being able to see with your eyes. The quote can feel something about the characters traits and how they can be so opposite from their physical abilities. This quote Conveys the facts. People can see in different ways. It is stated that,“although he is blind, he ‘sees’ how to get along with others in profound and important ways. By contrast, the narrator, although sighted, does not see how his isolation damages himself, his wife, and their relationship. He is

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. Good morning Ms Linton and students, today I will be informing you on why you must choose these two poems for the poetry speaking contest. The poems I have chosen are ‘The Man from Ironbark’, by Banjo Patterson as well as ‘He Started the Cycling Craze’ by myself. Narratives help the readers enjoy and understand poetry as it is a way the poets can connect to their readers by using storylines that may relate to them or something that they enjoy.

Most people depend on their sight to guide their path, but what if they lose their sense of sight? What would they do? Emily Dickinson’s vision grew poorer and poorer as she aged due to writing poems in the dim light of the night. She wrote two poems related to sight, but there was a much deeper meaning to the both of them. Sometimes people with the ability of sight are blinded as to someone who is blind can see clearly. People can not always depend on their eyes to lead their path in life.They have to open their soul to lead the way.

We often think that when someone is blind, deaf, mute, or in loss of any sense, that they are missing out on something. We tend to feel bad or them. What most of us don’t know, or maybe just haven’t thought of, is that although they are missing out on one of the many gifts of life, that gives them the capability to see things from a different perspective. The narrator in the short story The Cathedral by Raymond Carver was a victim of this thought. One may believe that the victim would be Robert, the blind man in this story, but using the New Criticism approach to analyze this story, you see that the narrator is the actual victim. A victim who is trapped in believing he’s blessed but not happy, a man who isn’t blind but cannot truly see the way the blind man can. Like Tupac Shakur once said “I would rather be stricken blind, than to live without expression of mind.”

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).

Wislawa Szymborska's "The Kindness of the Blind" describes the challenge of reading a poem to a blind person. The poet is not the speaker, but the speaker knows what the poet is thinking as he reads the poem, allowing the reader to understand the poet's emotions. Initially, the poet is surprised by his own anxiety over reading the poem; he "did not suspect it was so hard" to read to a blind person (2). He is conscious of his own apprehension, and the speaker notes that "his voice is breaking/his hands are shaking"(3-4). The reader is left wondering why the poet is so nervous, and the speaker explains the source of the apprehension in line 5. Because his audience is a blind man, the poet feels that "here each sentence is put to the test of the dark" (5-6). He cannot rely on outside scenes or the listener's own mental images to enhance his writing; it is laid bare in front of him, causing him to critique his own

Ritsos admires the ability to find beauty in suffering as a smile on the lips will defeat it. He sees that the strength of hope is a gun in the hands of the people. If the poet has conquered blindness, however, it is only because he asks us to imagine what the world has never offered us: absolute freedom, justice, and equality - not oppression, injustice, and violence. This is why we must always, at every moment, invent the world a new, in all our blindness, in the midst of a life that is always touched by death. We must invent a world instead of being subjected to one or dreaming of another. we must recognize a world where blind statues see and act responsibly toward one another, where the mute sing. His preoccupation with poetry as the weapon

    The theme blindness & sight best resembles Tiresias as he is blind, but he has the ability to metaphorically  ‘see’ what others can’t. A good example of this is when Tiresias says “How terrible- to see the truth

The speaker then leaves the voices behind, ignoring the “melancholy.” This is tragic but realistic as life is filled with problems, making it futile to try and help everyone who asks. The second stanza marks the beginning of the speaker’s journey. The beginning line, “it was already late enough,” means the speaker wishes that they had decided to lead their desired life sooner. “The road full of fallen branches and stones” signify hardships one faces while on the path to personal growth, proving that life presents challenges along the way that must be overcome. Line 21 marks a tonal shift in the poem in which the speaker gradually finds their “voice” or individuality after years of following the crowd. Imagery like “the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds” once again ties in nature and connects stars to hope. Oliver uses an anaphora for the last four lines, to emphasize that the only life one can save is their own. Her use of the word “you” instead of “I” interestingly connects the speaker to the reader, spreading the message to live authentically and for oneself. Oliver’s transcendentalist beliefs are hard to miss in this poem, as she herself is known to be a private person