The blind man from Cathedral by Raymond Carver

In this story the husband’s view of the blind man is forever changed when he confronts his wife’s friend, Robert. The husband’s small-minded views and prejudice mind set of one stereotype is changed by a single encounter he has with Robert, the blind man. Her husband, Bub is forever changed when he thinks he sees the Blind man’s point of view of the world personally. In the beginning of this story the husband is somewhat insipid on the concept of love. In the text, for example, when he tells the story about his wife’s first husband, and also went too far stating he doesn’t even deserve to be named because “he was the childhood sweetheart…and what more does he want” (Carver, 107). Also Bub has no shame for mocking Robert when he tells the story of Beulah, his wife, of her tragic death her husband has no empathy for her marrying Robert because he was blind. Her husband still mocking even asked if she was a “Negro” because of her name (Carver, 108). It wasn’t until the very end when the husband was describing a Cathedral to Robert when he finally realized Robert’s, a blind man’s, viewpoint of the world. In an instance, her husband changed, dynamically and has a break through all of his jealousy, lack of discernment, and biases in one brief moment of understanding (Carver,

The narrator quickly falls out of the conversation; however, he highlights that even though he does not enjoy Robert’s presence, he does not want to be perceived as rude by him. He explains how every “now and then [he] joined in [the conversation. He] didn’t want [Robert] to think [he’d] left the room.” By listening to the chatting between his wife and Robert, the narrator begins to think of Robert as a “blind jack-of-all-trades,” and he starts to feel jealous of the relationship that his wife and Robert share. The main reason behind the narrator’s resentment is due to his lack of a healthy relationship with his wife; the narrator even points out how he “waited in vain to hear [his] name on [his] wife’s sweet lips [during her conversation with Robert]...But [he] heard none of the sort.” The palpable tension between the couple along with the discomfort that Robert creates causes the narrator to feel out of place in his own home.

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

He is always focused on his wife, and even though it is not his ideal of a perfect marriage he does seem to love and admire his wife as if it was. He is capable of telling us a lot of details about his wife without ever calling her out or even trying to persuade us to dislike her. His love for her makes it possible for the narrator to get past his dislike of Robert, and allow him to stay in his house. Even after all the dislike he shares with us in the very beginning of the story. He comes into the kitchen to talk to his wife, and tries his best to be a nice guy about the topic of the blind guest which is a much different view from earlier. This persuades us to look at the narrator in his wife's perspective, even though we have knowledge that she doesn't about the narrators anxiety over Robert. Another large detail we have over the wife is that the narrator is jealous of Robert and is just using his blindness as a scapegoat. However, even though this extreme case of jealousy is unhealthy for their relationship, the narrator, in his own way, tells his wife he loves her. When his wife tells him "If you love me... you can do this for me. If you don't love me, okay." he does exactly that and tries to make Robert comfortable (Carver 107).

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 husband first begins to open up to Robert when he watches with "admiration" as the blind man eats his food. He begins to see Robert as an independent man that has learned to live life despite his disability. There is a moment of connection when they all three finally begin the meal and he describes them as if they were all the same, eating the same way, intently and "seriously" (351). The husband asks to share a joint with Robert when his wife is not present, showing an indication of trust or maybe cockiness (352). Though shocked of her husband's actions, the wife joins in when she returns. When the wife has passed out between them, he commences to enjoying Robert's presence. When Robert wishes to stay up with him, listening to the television, the husband makes the

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

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

The narrator’s prejudice of blind men makes him unsure of Robert’s arrival. He wasn’t sure why or how his wife was able to retain a relationship with this blind man for so long. When he hears that Robert had a wife named Beulah that passed away he wonders how someone could have married such a man like Robert and stayed with him for eight years. The narrator thought it was just pitiful marriage on Beulah’s behalf because to his understanding there would be restrictions since Robert cannot see. The narrator’s ignorance is clearly revealed when he says, “He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me.

In the “Cathedral,” Raymond Carver tried to portray two different aspects of blindness; one is a person who physically unable to see the world due to lack of eyes and other aspect concerns about narrator’s and his wife’s blindness who are not blind physical but socially and emotionally. In this story, there are various metaphors of blindness. One example of which is a blind person helping the other person (who is not visually impaired) to draw cathedral even though he hasn't seen one. Blindness is not a physical inability of a person; it's beyond than that. In the “Cathedral,” Robert wasn’t the one that was blind however, the narrator was blind.

Also, the narrator is jealous of his wife?s friendship with Robert because he is insecure about his own relationship with her. When the narrator has the opportunity to listen to one of the blind man?s tapes he is interrupted and never gets to finish listening to the tape. The narrator says, "maybe it was just as well. I?d heard all I wanted to." This really shows that the blind man offended him, not because of something rudely said, but because of he was jealous of their emotional bond.

“My wife looked at me with irritation. She was heading towards a boil. The she looked at the blind man and said, ‘Robert, do you have a TV?’” (Carver 37) The main character’s wife was important because she consistently tried to make her blind guest feel welcomed and facilitate to her husband that Robert, though he was blind, was still an able man. She was an asset for this story to unfold. The reader can conclude that without her help in the beginning, the two men, particularly the main character, would find it difficult to start a civilized conversation. Although it took some assistance, the protagonist started unfolding after dinner, when the two men where left along to talk, drink, and smoke. It is noticeable how he went from resentful to more open as time went by. When the two men were watching television alone, the main character patiently kept Robert up to date on what was going on. Within such a short period of time, the main character’s heart towards Robert was notably altered from the beginning where he was distant and quiet to the middle and towards the end where he appeared more vulnerable and

Although, the narrator struggles with the misunderstandings behind his wife’s and the blind man’s relationship it becomes apparent that Robert was in fact married. The narrator is proven to have jealous thoughts and a biased opinion of what blind people are like, but he realizes that Robert was now widowed and has lost a woman that “never [saw] herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one” (Carver 458). Robert was the “husband [that] could never read the expression on her face, be it misery or something better” (458). These revelations are just a few that possibly help the narrator start to feel some comfort behind the upcoming visit.

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