Stereotyping disables people
Nobody should assume how is the life of disabled people without knowing what they have been through nor should people believe on what they see. “When people rely on surface appearances and false racial stereotypes, rather than in-depth knowledge of others at the level of the heart, mind and spirit, their ability to access and understand people accurately are compromised” (James A. Forbes). According to the Longman dictionary, a stereotype is a belief or idea of what a particular type of person is like. The majority of human beings like to judge and assume when it comes to people with disabilities. Societies base their judgments on people incapacities or because some people don’t know how to treat disabled people. But disabled people can surprise you. In this essay, I will describe some of the stereotypes about people with disabilities that Raymond Carver shows in the story Cathedral.
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The narrator turns the television on, and there is a documentary about a cathedral. The narrator explains what it looks like to Robert and Robert persuades the narrator to draw a cathedral together.
Carver presents a lot of stereotypes about people with disabilities that I will briefly discuss. The narrator believes that blind people walk slowly. As Robert was blind, the narrator assumed that Robert did not walk like other people because he did not know where he was walking. Also, the narrator states that blind people use dogs for assistance and that they don’t laugh. In addition, the narrator expresses indirectly that blind people don’t have beards and that they are
The unnamed narrator does not see Robert, the blind man, as a person, but as someone different. The grandmother, on the other hand, believes in her appearance and belief that is better than other people. After the challenges they both face, they end up finding enlightenment. In “Cathedral,” the narrator was not certain on how to describe the Cathedral to Robert. The narrator resorts to drawing and with a pen in his hand, he had realized that Robert “closed his hand over my hand” and asks the narrator to “close your eyes” as they drew the Cathedral (75-76).
In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, it is a story about an interaction between the author, the author’s wife, and the wife’s blind friend, Robert. The blind friend was staying the night at the author’s house and he did not like the idea of it, but since it was his wife’s friend he dealt with it. The author gave characteristics to the blind guy and himself. The author assumed that blind people can’t do anything like a normal person does. The author said that “Did you have a good train ride?’
Why do people make an initial judgement about a person they have only seen or heard about? Without any information at all, the brain formulates an answer to the question they were pondering: who is that person? One of our greatest sins is to place people into boxes, defining them into one shape, into one dimension. Stereotypes are a very predominant part of reality as well as fictional works. In the novels The Hangman’s Daughter and The Dark Monk , by Oliver Pötzsch, one of the most prevalent themes presented is the idea that people do not necessarily reflect what society expects from them, either because of their role or position within the community.
The Difference Between Looking And Seeing: What The Last Scene in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” Really Means In the last scene of “Cathedral,” Robert shows the narrator another way to look at the world by asking him to close his eyes and change his perspective, both erasing the narrator’s previous stigma against blind people and giving the narrator a renewed sense of understanding. The narrator has full use of his eyes but doesn’t truly see the goodness in his two companions in the story, by, for example, dismissing his wife’s poetry. Though Robert is blind, he has a different type of sight, a sight that lets him emotionally connect to the narrator’s wife.
According to the U.S. Census, 5.6% of the United States’ population is Asian. There are millions of Asian Americans who reside here, they exist. So why does Hollywood and other forms of media pretend like they do not? Unfortunately, when Hollywood does acknowledge their existence, Asian Americans are limited to typecasted roles such as a nerd, a taxi driver, or a kung fu master. Not only are these roles offensive, they also inaccurately represent an entire ethnic group.
The narrator lives an unhappy life and relationship with his wife. He bases his views on the blind by what he sees on television, reads, and the stereotypes that are associated with the blind. “My idea of blindness came from the movies”(Carver 32). The narrator mentions that Robert does not use a cane or wear dark glasses which he expects him to use.
Lulu Asselstine Mrs. Olsen LA 8 5 November, 2017 Stereotypes and Perspectives When looking at a bunch of bananas in a grocery store, people tend to choose the perfect spotless bananas, since stereotypically food that is perfect looking, with no flaws, taste better. However, people soon realize that when you start to eat bananas that have more spots and are imperfect they turn out to be sweeter and better. This connects to stereotypes because people who follow stereotyped will always eat the perfect bananas; however, people who choose to look through another perspective can realize that the imperfect bananas are better. This connects to The Outsiders because Ponyboy realizes this after he talks with two Socs, kids from a rival group named Randy and Cherry. In The Outsiders, S.E Hinton presents the idea that teenagers can break through stereotypes if they look at life through another perspective; as shown in the book when Ponyboy starts to talk to Cherry and Randy and realizes the stereotypes about them are false.
“Only 50 years ago persons with intellectual disabilities were scorned, isolated and neglected. Today, they are able to attend school, become employed and assimilate into their local community” (Nelson Mandela). Prior to the later part of the 20th century people with intellectual disabilities were often ridiculed, treated unfairly, feared, and locked away in institutions. According to Rhonda Nauhaus and Cindy Smith in their article Disability Rights through the Mid-20th Century, The laws of any nation reflect its societal values. The real life issue of discrimination towards people with intellectual disabilities in the United States and Australia is demonstrated in the novel, Of Mice and Men by showing how this issue affects one of the main characters, Lennie Smalls.
Chen Guangcheng, a prominent blind civil rights activist, said, “How a society treats its disabled is the true measure of a civilization.” The topic of disabilities is touched upon many times in the novella Of Mice and Men. John Steinbeck writes masterfully, driving character development forward employing societal paradigms on which to model his alternate world. Because the story is less plot driven as some others, it relies heavily on the presence of literary elements coupled with the exploration of civic themes. The undertones of political commentary in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men attempt to convey the mistreatment of people with disabilities in that they are isolated from society and treated vehemently, in order to connect us to characters’s social experiences in relation to the norms of the time period.
Through the characterization of the narrator, Carver manages to discuss the effects of stereotypes and their shortcomings. The narrator immediately demonstrates his dislike for Robert in his first words: “The blind man” (Carver 100). Using this phrase instead of the man’s actual name dehumanizes the blind man. Readers find out that the narrator’s attitude towards blind people comes from motion pictures, which is deemed quite unreasonable. He had the misconception that the blind man “moved slowly and never laughed” (Carver 100).
“I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And being blind bothered me” (104) The narrator has no knowledge of experiencing seeing a blind person. “My idea of blindness came from the movies” (104).
In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the narrator has trouble with connecting with Robert because he is blind. The narrator is unable to see a deeper level than the superficial. Robert ends up teaching the narrator that there is a difference between “looking” and “seeing” and that “seeing” is much more work, and gives much more information than just “looking”. The narrator is the character that is most affected by the encounter with Robert. He is not a good person nor a bad person, he goes to his 9-5 job, comes home sits
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
Disability is one of the many things that we all face every day in one way or another. Our attitudes towards it can be affected by multiple models whether that be via family/friends, the media, or a personal experience and sometimes via assumptions we make without realising it or whether we know those assumptions to be true or not. My personal attitudes towards people with disabilities have been shaped by family, personal experiences and especially via the media. Media The media is a universal tool that we all use, it can provide information to us and it can also shape our opinions on different topics.
Amazing fact, question or quote about the topic:Did you know that right here in the U.S. there is a common house spider name the recluse spider that from one bite you can develop different disabilities just depending on how your body reacts, some include kidney problems, amputation from the source of the bite, or dermonecrosis. This shows that you shouldn’t tease or do anything mean to disabled people because you could get a disability just by a bite of a spider. Claim sentence for the entire essay. So it is best to understand and work with the disabled because you just might become one.