One Blind Man To Another In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

arrogant and closeminded. The narrators jealous and negative personality is especially clear when he learns his wife's blind friend, Robert, is planning a visit. When the narrator is introduced to Robert, he critiques every aspect of

A person who is medically blind can still see, and a person with 20/20 vision can be just as blind or even more than a person who is medically blind. In Raymond Carver's short story "Cathedral" the narrator is waiting for his wife's old friend to arrive. However, he is not very thrilled with him visiting because this man, Robert, is blind. The narrator is very ignorant in what he knows about blind people, and of the comments he makes about Robert or blind people in general. The narrator is ignorant because simply put, he does not know or have any understanding of blind people. (add something about Robert being able to see more)

In the beginning of Raymond Carver’s, “Cathedral” the protagonist, who was also the narrator, was not sympathetic towards the blind man. The main character had many preconceived notions about blind people and did not consider life inside their shoes. When they first met, the protagonist felt disgust and lack of empathy towards Robert, the blind man, but he restrained from showing his emotions. It is also very noticeable that the main character was continually jealous of the attention and admiration that his wife gave to her friend, Robert. “I waited in vain to hear my name on my wife’s sweet lips: ‘And then my dear husband came into my life’ -- something like that” (Carver 37). It was an immature mindset that was caused by an unsympathetic and uninterested thought

People who judge a person based on such a characteristic only see the particular aspect of the person that makes them uncomfortable. They are unable to see the whole person. The narrator unconsciously places Robert in a category that he deems uncommon, which prevents him from seeing the blind man as an equal.

In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver there is many themes of suspiciousness, fitting together, and uncertainty in this short story. The story is written in a first person narrator as we have no as to whom is talking so the idea can be made that this the author. Additionally from this I can see the narrator is detached from the story.

The narrator didn’t like the blind man because of the way that his wife described what he did to her before she left and married her childhood sweetheart. He wanted to know why the blind man wanted to touch his wife’s face. As Carver quoted, “She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose – even her neck!”(62). He wasn’t sure how she let the blind man touch her face if he couldn’t see anything. The way that he reacted when his wife told him that she wrote poems about the blind man and he was slightly jealous because he wishes that his wife did the same thing for him since they were married. I think that the narrator was more jealous of how his wife and the blind would always send each other tapes based on what happened in their lives. As quoted, “She told him everything, or so it seemed to me” (Carver 63). He felt isolated from his wife because she told the blind man mostly everything and maybe there was a chance that the blind man was easier to talk to despite everything that happened to her. The narrator felt like he wasn’t good enough or wasn’t the type of person who was easy to talk to when it came to his wife. The way that narrator talked about the blind man was as if he envy him for the person that he was and the person his wife consider him as a best

Robert’s being open to new things impresses the husband, and this is evident when the husband and Robert smoke cannabis together. As the story progresses, the husband gradually becomes more comfortable with Robert and forgets his preconceived notions about him. The climax of the story comes in the end when the husband experiences a revelation about what it is like to be a blind man. Seeing is believing, or in this case, not seeing is believing.

“And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed...A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.” The main character and narrator of Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” harbors such predetermined assumptions about his wife’s visiting friend, Robert, who happens to be blind. Throughout the story, the narrator describes his wife’s past, which includes details about her first love, how her acquaintance with Robert came to be, and Robert’s impression on her life in the preceding years as they exchanged audiotapes to keep up with one another. Robert’s arrival and company begins to defy and change the narrator’s postulated ideas about blind individuals and even influences the narrator to act more open-minded. Nearing the end of the story, when the television portrays certain European cathedrals, Robert requests that the narrator draw a cathedral with him and has him close his eyes, which ultimately alters his understanding of himself and the world. As many elements of the story reflect Raymond Carver’s own life, the audience can gain a sense of his personality through the narrator and Robert. Through the narrator’s need for intoxication, narrative style, and his depiction of his wife and Robert, the irony that even though the narrator and his wife are not blind, they are still missing a sense of satisfaction in their lives while Robert, unable to see, understands the world and the key to happiness.

Franz Kafka’s short story The Metamorphosis, becoming a beetle gives Gregor insight on his family. Raymond Carver’s short story The Cathedral, shows Bub, a once judgmental man, the insight on blindness. Before their changes, they were blinded by what was in front of them. Life changes cause Gregor’s and Bub’s perspective to differ from what they once were.

Form the very beginning, the narrator makes it known that he does not approve of the relationship his wife has with an old friend: “They made tapes and mailed them back and forth. I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me.” (165). The fact that he was upset about the visit of his wife’s old friend is troubling, but to dislike a man he does not even know because he is blind is beyond insensitive. Even though he is not saying these things aloud, he is still having these thoughts.

In Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral,” a blind man named Robert visits a man and his wife in their home for a short period. In the beginning, the husband is very rude to Robert due to his inability to see. However, by the end of Robert’s stay, the husband realizes that he is quite far from being a blind fool. By analyzing the theme, character, and conflict of the short story, the reader will be able to better understand what messages lay within Carver’s writing.

As if someone has unlocked his prison cell to liberate him of his stereotypical point of view. The protagonist of Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” was an individual whose stagnant mind has blind him from truly seeing the aspects and characteristics of people around him. Before meeting his wife’s blind friend whose name is Robert, the protagonist perceives reality with a stereotypical mind-set shaped by misleading information from movies. Hence, he make judgement about other people without ever setting his foot inside their shoes. Robert whose character, in an academic sense acts like a teacher, helps enlighten the protagonist’s mind by through his appearance, and actions. Raymond Carver explores how individuals with stereotypical perspective are metaphorically blind, but he also reassures readers that it is possible for these people to broaden their knowledge when they learn how to be empathetic.

To emphasize the baffling aspects of the piquant moments in the short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the author relates in the story by using first person narrator. The anonymous narrator is narcissistic; anxious only with how the little stay from Robert will imitate him. He is also envious of how would be the relation of his wife and Robert will be in the past. The narrator also seems to lack self-awareness. He feels sorry for Robert’s wife, Beulah, because her husband wasn’t able to admire her beauty, never understanding that he doesn’t really know his own wife notwithstanding the fact that he can see her. The narrator is not a very good storyteller too, putting his narrative together ineptly, with rough switches and defensive disruptions.

“I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me” (99) the narrator tells us in Raymond Carver’s Cathedral. An old friend of the narrator’s wife, Robert, is coming to visit them at their home. The narrator is not at all pleased with this situation and lets us know it from the beginning. Throughout the story, the narrator begins to see the blind man in a different light and his mind-set begins to change to admiration.

Blindness does not merely limit itself to the eyes: it can plague the most profound depths of the heart as well. When a man closes off one of the most vital veins to his heart, compassion, he too can find himself lost in the bleak and somber tundra of mere existence. The liberation of the heart is a liberation which some cannot easily attain. In many instances, the heart may require an influence or spark that revives the compassion that is lacking. In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” the author takes this notion of intervention and demonstrates it through the tale of a vulgar and callous man who seems to lack even the slightest amount of compassion for anyone. The man appears to have no friends, no direction in life, and he most certainly has no filter. These claims become apparent throughout the beginning of the story and towards the middle when the man speaks of an expected visitor, Robert, his wife’s old friend who happens to be blind, and brutally launches his narrow-minded prejudices towards the old man. The story presents an ironic twist as the reader begins to realize that despite the blind man’s disability, he appears to have a far greater sense of vision than the narrator and is even somewhat successful in kindling a newly found compassion within the heart of the narrator.