Raymond Carver Cathedral Symbolism

Robert is a caring man who knows how to listen and hold a mature conversation. Robert and the narrator’s wife’s relationship began ten years ago, when “she'd seen something in the paper: HELP WANTED—Reading to a Blind man, and a telephone number. She phoned and went over, was hired on the spot.” (179). Over the summer “they’d become good friends” (179), and at the end, Robert was allowed to touch her face, making their friendship more personal. His wife found it memorable and significant, “she even tried to write a poem about it.” (179). After that summer, the narrator’s wife moved away from Seattle to an Air Force base in Alabama with her childhood sweetheart. The narrator’s wife moved around quite a bit and would often feel lonely, and unhappy in her situation. After a suicide attempt, she put her thoughts and feelings on tapes to send to Robert. Robert was always emotionally there for her, to support her, something her current husband cannot offer her. This communication that was allowed through audio tapes was a real emotional bond, forged with understanding and caring. When they meet in person for the first time in ten years, it seemed as if nothing has changed between

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

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

In the story “Cathedral”, author, Raymond Carver, show the readers that a person does not need their eyes to see as sight has a deeper meaning for different people. Within the story, the narrator, husband, describe his experience with his wife’s longtime friend Robert, a blind man who came to visit after losing his own wife to cancer. The story takes place in the husband’s home somewhere in the East Coast near Connecticut. As the husband has a drink and waits for his wife’s arrival with Robert, the husband shows an uneasiness about Robert being blind. Upon their arrival, the husband notices how joyful and happy his wife is with Robert and does not understand why. Inside the home, the husband and Robert had a few drinks accompanied with light conversation until dinner where the husband is impressed at how the Robert can describe the foods there are eating. After the dinner, the husband leaves to the couch to watch T.V. The wife and Robert join the husband him shortly after. After the wife falls asleep on the couch, the husband stops on a channel where they speak of Cathedrals and the blind man want him to describe it. Unable to use descriptive word to help Robert see, Robert asks the husband to draw the Cathedral on a paper thick enough so Robert can feel the lines. Robert joins hands with the husband as he draws on the paper and begins to visualize what a cathedral looks like while the husband has an insight on how to see through the eyes of a blind person, so to speak. The

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

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.

Ability to see is the only thing that matters to the narrator and he didn't even try to see the things beyond the surface, that's why he doesn't really know his wife well. Robert, on the other hand, is the one who has the ability to “see” on a much deeper level than the narrator. In the story, the only conversation happened between the narrator and his wife were mean trades in which the narrator does minimal more than irritate her. Robert understands narrator's wife more profoundly than the narrator despite the fact that Robert can't physically see narrator's wife.

Immediately, the narrator reveals his narrow mindedness when faced with Robert, the blind man. Preconceived judgemental comments are mentioned moments after the initial meeting, as the narrator refuses to refer to the man by his name, instead only acknowledging him as “the blind man”. He recalls a moment when the blind man touched his wife’s face, not fully understanding the importance of such action, only classifying it as unusually strange. The narrator then reveals that he has “never met or personally known, anyone who was blind”, offering an insight into an explanation for his behaviour.

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 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 the beginning of the story, the husband, who is the narrator of “Cathedral,” seems to be a very ignorant, uncaring man. Nesset wrote “Walled in by his own insecurities and prejudices, this narrator is sadly out of touch with his world and with himself, buffered by drink and pot and by the sad reality, as his wife puts it, that he has no ‘friends’” (Nesset 124). The narrator has no connection to himself or the outside world. He has no friends, as his wife points out, which goes to show he keeps to himself, but he still doesn’t fully understand who “himself” is, because he doesn’t have that connection to himself, thus leading to the drinking and drugs. He wasn’t used to change, so having a visitor come over to his house bothered him. The moment he saw Robert, the narrator began to change. When his wife pulled up with the blind man in the car and they got out of the car, he saw that Robert had a beard and he thought to himself, “This blind man, feature this, he was wearing a full beard! A beard on a blind man! Too much, I say” (Carver 35). The narrator had expected to see the blind man in the way they showed them in the movies, but now that his idea of who Robert was as a person was being challenged, the change started to appear. Robert, who is a static character, is very essential in the change of the narrator. It is because Robert is the way he is, his marrying of a colored woman, his travels around the

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