Raymond Carver wrote the interesting short story, “Cathedral” about a blind man who can ‘see’ and the narrator, a man who has his sight, but is blind. The narrator is the protagonist in Carver’s story and is seen as a terrible communicator. Carver purposely has the character start off in a bad place and end up in a better one. The author characterizes the narrator and uses the plot of the story to show the concept that someone can have all senses and still be disconnected from reality and not understanding of their surroundings.
For most of the story, the narrator is characterized as arrogant, out of touch with reality, and insensitive. The story starts off with the narrator telling readers how his wife has a blind friend who is coming to
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The blind man’s wife had recently died and that’s why he was coming to visit. The narrator thought it was absurd that he was able to have a wife, he says it “ was beyond my understanding” (11). He even said how he started to feel sorry for the blind man for a minute then he began to think about the predicament the wife was in, and only the narrator thought was a bad situation. With him not trying to see the deeper effect they might’ve had on each other, he says, “And then I found myself thinking what a pitiful life this woman must have led. Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one” (11). Just because Robert wasn’t able to physically see his wife, the narrator believed that he wasn’t able to make his wife happy any other way rather than complimenting her looks. He fails to look beyond the surface and thinks that being able to see is everything. This is why he doesn’t know his wife as well as he should. The narrator’s wife always made tapes about events going on in her life and sent them to the blind man who always listened and sent a tape back. The narrator says, “She wanted to talk. They talked. He asked her to send him a tape and tell him about her life. She did this” (3). The narrator’s wife seems to tell the blind man more about herself and her life than she …show more content…
He seems special because he communicates with others creatively and has an understanding of his surroundings more than anyone else. At the end of the story, after the narrator’s wife fell asleep, Robert and the narrator were talking and the narrator asks him if he wanted to smoke with him. Robert agreed in trying it. Robert had never smoked cannabis before so when the wife asked Robert about it, he says, “I do now, my dear. There’s a first time for everything. But I don’t feel anything yet” (8). Robert was quick to try new things & that shows him being different, as the narrator stated earlier in the story he had read that blind people don’t smoke also. Robert being able to take in the surroundings around him allows him to have a better understanding of everything, making him ‘see’. The same happens when Robert asks the narrator to draw the cathedral. The narrator wasn’t expecting that because he knows Robert can’t physically see. While drawing, the narrator says, “The blind man felt around over the paper. He moved the tips of the fingers over the paper… Doing fine, the blind man said” (13). Robert later makes the narrator feel over the paper and the narrator describes it like “nothing else in my life up to now”() Robert shows both his creative communication skills and him being different than the stereotypical blind
In both short stories, “Cathedral” written by Raymond Carver and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” written by Flannery O’Connor, we encounter characters that have a limited perspective on life. We find that the unnamed narrator in “Cathedral” has a bias mindset towards the blind man, Robert before he even meets and gets to know him. While in “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the grandmother is ignorant of her surroundings while being oblivious to her own flaws. Both stories demonstrate the overcoming of blindness through prejudice and vanity to end up seeing something greater than themselves through the use of characterization, symbolism, and epiphanies. In “Cathedral,” the narrator’s wife invites her blind friend, Robert, to stay in their home
From that moment, the narrator show his true side to me. It shows that he doesn’t not care about his wife feeling toward the blind man. After carefully reading “cathedral”, the narrator is jealous of the blind man relationship with his
In the world of literature, stories are often released for the purpose of social commentary or even to reflect on the authors past in a that its similar to an autobiography. Raymond Carver is a unique author often creating short stories that are of his own personal life through fictional characters that embody the turmoil he has gone through and social commentary on social issues. This is seen especially in his 1981 short story, Cathedral with a revised version being released in 1983, but we are gonna focus on the 1981 original. Cathedral’s plot centers around a blind man named Robert who after his wife dies, he lives with his departed wife’s friend who soon alongside her husband, helps teach Robert to learn a new way of seeing. The plot of the story while simple, is very complex under the surface, being a plot that is about three people who is dependent on each other and the connection that develops.
Robert literally can’t see, but he does obtain vision only on a deeper level. The narrator isn’t too enamored with the idea of another man coming to his home. He is insensitive and makes some harsh comments that make Robert feel a little uncomfortable. Due to his callous and unsympathetic personality, the narrator is never able to connect with his wife while Robert is instantly able to. Robert comes to visit the narrator and his wife at their home for the first time.
In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” written in 1983, the author points out that empathy and perspective are the only way to truly experience profound emotion. The narrator is struggling is sucked into his own comfort zone, he drowns his dissatisfaction on life, marriage, and job in alcohol. A man of limited awareness breaks through his limitations by socializing with a blind man. Despite Roberts physical limitations, he is the one who saved narrator from himself and helped him to find the ones vies of the world.
Raymond Carver is said to be one the most influential American writers and poets in the 20th century, especially in his works of short stories. One of his most famous pieces is “Cathedral.” This well-known short story is the final piece in Carver’s collection Cathedral published in 1983. Carver includes much symbolism through the story’s plot, structure, point of view, tone, and character build. The depictions of each character’s experiences, the irony in the story, and hearing the narrator’s point of view in “Cathedral” work in harmony to support its themes that prejudice and ignorance as well as the nature of reality are present and change throughout the course of the story, and all lead to a strong character development by the close.
“Cathedral” The essay “Cathedral”, by Robert Carver, is about a man who is unsure of a blind gentleman named Robert that is coming to stay in his home for the weekend. His wife met Robert when she was reading to the blind. The narrator of the story who remains unnamed through the essay is not happy about Robert coming to stay in his home. He thought all blind people were the same and Robert taught him what it was like to be blind.
“His being blind bothered me” (Carver 1). In Raymond Carver’s short story Cathedral, Carver establishes an ignorant narrator, who is dependent on alcohol and fixated upon physical appearance; he juxtaposes the narrator to a blind man who sees with his heart rather than his eyes. Through indirect characterization, Carver contrasts the narcissistic narrator to the intuitive blind man while utilizing sight as a symbol of emotional understanding. He establishes the difference between looking and seeing to prove that sight is more than physical.
After a small introduction when the two characters first meet, the narrator recognizes that he “didn’t know what else to say” (Carver, 4), signifying his inability in connecting with Robert. A reason behind the trouble in connecting is discussed in “Literary Analysis of Cathedral” by Niwar A. Obaid, where he writes “The narrator’s apparently judgmental and doubtful tone… [set] a difficult attitude once the blind man and the narrator actually meet”. Obaid lists the narrator’s tone as one of the primary reasons why the narrator is reluctant to get to know Robert better. Since the narrator’s tone is caused by his prejudices, as previously shown, one can infer from Obaid’s writing that the real reason behind the narrator’s reluctance to form a relationship is his prejudice against the blind. Later in the story, Carver juxtaposes Robert’s readiness to learn more about the narrator to the narrator’s initial refusal to develop a relationship to Robert.
The Wife’s Story Ursula K. Leguin is a short story describing a wife retrospective of her husband who she thought of as a loving and caring father and husband a somewhat perfect person always gentle. Yet he had a fatal flaw that led to his death that the wife failed to recognize until it was too late. Throughout the story, the wife recounts important events that led to his deaths events that should have been clues to aid her to recognize the flaw within her husband. In the story, Leguin shows us how the wife’s perception was deceiving her. She was looking at her husband but couldn’t see him for whom he really was.
In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the narrator struggles with an internal conflict that involves him never being able to be in a vulnerable or sensitive state, especially when he is with his wife. The narrator creates suspense by having the reader wait until the end to realize what the blind man was referring to when he states, “From all you’ve said about him, I can only conclude—” (Carver 35). The reader can observe that the blind man was explaining that the husband was missing out on all aspects of life and the little things the world has to offer. The husband was so closed-minded, that he was missing out on having a deeper connection with his wife.
The narrator begins to change as Robert taught him to see beyond the surface of looking. The narrator feels enlightened and opens up to a new world of vision and imagination. This brief experience has a long lasting effect on the narrator. Being able to shut out everything around us allows an individual the ability to become focused on their relationships, intrapersonal well-being, and
In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” he writes a story about a husband's journey to his epiphany. Robert, a blind man, teaches the husband how to see without his eyes. Often a person with the ability to see takes this for granted, leaving them only to see what is on the outside rather than seeing people, and things for what they really are. In this short story, Carver conveys the narrators epiphany through the symbol of the cathedral. Carver develops a story with symbolism throughout his story, beginning with the first line, “This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s
Robert asks about the narrator’s religion which brings them to the topic of Cathedrals. Since Robert is blind he doesn’t know exactly what a Cathedral is and only can picture a normal building and what he thinks it might be like. As they continue to talk, Robert asks for some paper and a pen. Robert takes Bub’s hand and tells him to draw a Cathedral. Robert continues to cheer Bub on and continue drawing.
In his contemporary short story, “Cathedral,” Raymond Carver tells the story of an unnamed narrator, his wife, and an old friend, a blind man named Robert. Robert has come to visit the narrator’s wife, who is quite excited to see this man whom she hasn’t seen in ten years, yet the same can’t be said of the narrator who is noticeably and vocally uncomfortable about his visit. The story is told through the narrator’s first person point of view, showcasing his thoughts and the events that take place when Robert comes to visit. Carver highlights the theme of having the ability to see, but not truly seeing, through his use of colloquial language, and creation of relatable characters. “Cathedral” begins with the narrator informing the audience