“Living is easy with eyes closed” – John Lennon. It’s clear that everyone has their own beliefs and opinions about everything. Some of these beliefs are based on facts, T.V, news and even stereotypes. “Cathedral,” a short story written by Raymond Carver, is about a man who tries to understand and accept a blind man that his wife had invited to stay at their house. In a short amount of time, our unnamed narrator who has a firm hold on what a blind person should be, undergoes a change when he comes face to face with one. Having thought that all blind people needed canes or black tinted glasses to cover their eyes, his assumption of blind people went out the door when our narrator comes face to face with the blind man, Robert, for the first time. Throughout the short story, our narrator slowly begins to see that the blind man is more than capable of taking care of himself. This can be seen when our narrator is surprised to see how well the blind man eats during dinner. “The blind man had right away located his foods, he knew just where everything was on his plate. I watched with admiration as he used the knife …show more content…
It wasn’t until later on when Robert was offered to smoke some marijuana by the male host. As they puffed and talked, I feel that this is where Robert had a sense of connection and our narrator began to see him more as a person then just a blind helpless man. “I’ll try some with you,” he said. “Damn right,” I said. “That’s the stuff” (par 58-59) this scene here gave me the feeling that he was puffing with a long lost friend for the first time in many years and their friendship was rekindled. As we see throughout the short story, our narrator is slowly realizing that he himself was the blind one, that all of his prior thoughts to blind people were out of ignorance and the lack of
Throughout the story, the narrator perceives Robert as an inadequate person, pathetic, needing help to find his way around and simply not being able to provide for himself. “But he didn’t use a cane and he didn’t
I enjoyed reading “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver. The story is realistic, relatable, and meaningful. The main protagonist, Bub, is arrogant and superficial. Because of Robert’s intimate relationship with his wife, he does not like the blind man. To cover up the fact that he is jealous, he states that he never had a blind man in his house before and that Robert does not have the characteristics he thought blind people have. Robert does not wear glasses, has a beard and etc. On page 90 he says, “I always thought dark glasses were a must for the blind.” This shows that even before he met Bub, he already had some preconceived picture of Bub that hinders him from really getting to know the real Bub. However, towards the end of the story he seems
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.
Prejudice is an issue that is present in communities around the world due to diversity in race, religion, sexual orientation, lifestyles and physical disabilities of others as well. However, sometimes it just takes a life changing moment for one to realize that he or she should not discriminate against others just because of their appearance or beliefs. In the story “Cathedral”, author Raymond Carver writes about a man who is prejudging towards his wife’s blind friend, Robert, who will be visiting the couple. At first the narrator, or “Bub” as Robert nicknamed him, does not like the idea of Robert staying there because he is blind. Once Robert arrives, “Bub” does not really make an effort to get along with him; they had dinner together
Because of this the husband was completely ignorant about blind people and could only rely on his preconceived notions about the blind to interact with Robert. The husband thought all blind people always wore dark glasses and used a cane or guide-dog. He didn’t think blind men smoked because they couldn’t see the smoke. He even says “My idea of blindness came from the movies.” Those movies had portrayed blind people as slow, never laughing, and being guided by guide-dogs implying and enforcing the stereotype that the blind/disabled are helpless, weird, and/or inferior. Kemp says in a paper from 1981, the same year “Cathedral” was published, that there are three main ill-mannered views of the blind: non-acceptance, the blind are helpless and dependant, and the sighted must help the blind. These are all negative and are representative of the way the blind were viewed during the time of the story showing how the husband saw Robert as a blind man.
In the beginning the narrator is un-named, we read the story as thoughts within his mind. His actions gives-off a sense of jealousy. He’s bothered by the former relationship the blind-man and his wife has had in the past. He is blunt and honest with (us) in telling how he feels about the situation. “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me.” “A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.” The narrator gives us the introduction to the life event. He tells us about his wife and how she met the blind-man. In short, she formally worked for him, reading him things when she lived in Seattle for a summer. The narrator mentioned when the blind-man touched around his wife face and her current marriage with her childhood sweetheart. Her husband at the time was in the military –industry, which caused her to have to move a lot. She and the blind-man kept in touch by sending voice recorded
Cathedral was written by Raymond Carver he was a working-class man who married at the age of nineteen and had two children and ended up dying of lung cancer. This story has three characters a blind man named Robert, the narrator, and the narrator’s wife, it starts out with the wife tell the husband which is the narrator that her longtime friend was going to spend the night which is Robert, which makes the husband a little jealous feeling like the blind man was coming to steal his wife. The story takes a wide turn when the Robert becomes more human-like than the narrator. I feel like blind people have more sense of life than people that can see. People that can see are sometimes blinded by their own wants and needs which makes them slow to see the big picture and with blind people because they can’t see they a care about other’s wants and needs.
Once Robert arrives some, of the narrators assumptions about blind people are broke down immediately like when he mentions "He didn't use a cane and he didn't
The notion of possessing an intrinsic bias is introduced in Raymond Carver’s Cathedral. He highlights how perception can affect the way people interact and communicate with each other for the first time. In the short story, the narrator himself is blind to the emotions of the people around him and eschews any form of self-reflection until the very end. He is envious of the blind man, who shares an intimate relationship with the narrator’s wife. However, the blind man is depicted as insightful and personal. Carver discloses in Cathedral that Robert, the blind man, and the narrator’s wife had been exchanging audiotapes for years, sharing their experiences and difficulties with one another.
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.
In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carter, the narrator has his vision, but he does not truly see the world. The blind man lacks sight, but sees deeper meanings to life.
His lack of understanding towards the blind man is aptly demonstrated when he states “My idea of blindness came from the movies.” (1.1) This quote stands to show not only the narrator’s lack of understanding of blindness, but also the shallowness of his overall understanding of the world. Despite the narrator’s unhappiness, his wife continues to persist. The narrator eventually ceases to complain and gives in, awaiting Robert’s arrival. Upon his arrival, the narrator falls much more silent and cynical, due to his envy and lack of connection with the man. This lack of connection is also often shown between the narrator and his wife, however it seems to the narrator that Robert and the narrator’s wife are deeply connected, making him all the more
The speaker puts Robert in a category that stops him from seeing him as an individual, yet receives an eye-opening experience through the blind man’s knowledge and
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
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.