Lack Of View In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

Can a person learn something from communicating with someone else? For some people connecting with a new person is difficult and one might question the idea of connecting with a new person. For example, in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” The narrator is unhappy about the blind man Robert coming to stay at his house. Then, the narrator starts to enjoy Robert’s company. While they are watching television, Robert tells the narrator to fetch a piece of heavy paper.

Throughout the story, the Narrator exhibits a lack of self-awareness and insight with the people around him. Not only does this affect how he acts, but also others around him. His personality causes him to have no friends, only his wife, in which he misunderstands a countless number of times. For example, he feels jealous when his wife talks about her preceding husband, the military officer in the flashbacks. The Narrator thought, “Her officer—why should he have a name?”

When Robert and the husband are drawing the Cathedral there’s a connection between them that is much different than when they first met. The husband is beginning to realize what it’s like not being able to see and having to feel everything. When he first tries to draw the Cathedral he can’t. The Cathedral has no meaning towards him. When he closes his eyes he gets a feel for the Cathedral when Robert guides his hand and he begins to understand the meaning of having to feel things.

Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something that the characters do not. Dramatic and situational irony appear throughout a few of Carver’s numerous remarkable short stories. Cathedral by Raymond Carver is the story about a blind man, Robert, who visits a husband and wife in their home. One would expect the husband to be able to see more than the blind man, but ironically this is not the case. The husband who is also the narrator can physically see, but figuratively can not.

Envy and Jealousy The narrator the husband in the story Cathedral uses emotion as judgment before getting to know Robert’s wife’s close friend she hasn’t seen him in a while. That was because he didn’t known about the visit she arranged it and planned it. To him it is a blind man a stranger who knows only his wife is coming over for the night. Not the recipe for the good night that is since there are those who aren’t pleased with strangers coming over.

This is another quality that is very necessary in order to receive forgiveness because without openly admitting to those who were harmed by the situation the sinner continues to live in secrecy. Claudius on the other hand, chooses to not apologise to his wife, Gertrude, or nephew, Hamlet, instead he confesses his sin by praying in act III scene iii. By not admitting to his sin to either his wife or nephew Claudius did not allow for the opportunity for any harms to be repaired. This speaks to his cowardly character and his inability to take full responsibility for his actions. Because he never came forward to either Gertrude or Hamlet he was never able to be forgiven and ultimately died before any amends could be

People can understand the tone by reading what the narrator has to say about the blind man. The narrator explains to the wife that he really did not want a blind man at his house, and won’t know how to act with a blind man. Instead of giving the blind man a chance, he starts complaining. The narrator would make jokes like “what side of the train did you sit on” (Carver,133), not thinking the old man could answer, although he could. The narrator also would stereotype the blind man by saying to himself, “I thought glasses were a must for blind people” (Carver,133).

At the beginning of “The Cathedral” the narrator is deemed as a non-loving, bad-mannered, and insensitive man, although one evening spent with the blind man

The fact that he would take advantage of people's money, eat all the food in the world, take advantage of women etc, made him happy in the moment. Phil believed he was happy because life at the moment was fun, but if he attended the sermon on the mount Jesus would have showed Phil just how unhappy he truly was because he was living without God. Phil was not seeking for righteousness, he was not making peace on the earth and he was not clean of heart. Phil was using his so called 'curse' to enjoy watching others be sad or frightened and he enjoyed it, going against the ways of God. If Phil did attend the sermon on the mount, he may have found an easier way out of his forever stay at the small town of Punxsutawney.

An old friend of the narrator "Robert,'' is the blind man in the story. When the sighted man tries to explain what a cathedral is like to the blind man, his words fail. One man relies on vision to communicate, the other does not. It was like they spoke different languages. At the end of the story when the narrator says "My eyes were still closed.

Similarly, Huck has flashbacks within his journey; however, there are much less flashbacks than there were in Catcher. When Huck decides to write the letter about how he now felt “clean for the first time” when discussing the way that he helped out and befriended Jim. Within this short flashback, Huck remembers all the good times that he had spent with Jim, and how they evolved from strangers to good friends. After spending so much time with Jim, Huck begins to

"Cathedral" a story about a man who is annoyed with his wife's old friend that is blind, but ends up teaching him a new way of viewing life. “Walk a mile in my shoes, see what I see, hear what I hear, feel what I feel, THEN maybe you'll understand why I do what I do, 'till then don’t judge me.” The advice to “walk a mile in someone else's shoes” means before judging someone, you must understand their challenges are in life and what they go though. This is clearly expressed in the story “Cathedral” by the narrator himself.

Two short stories that are very interesting and different is "The Rocking Horse Winner" and "Cathedral. " They are very distinguished with the themes of each short story. In "The Rocking Horse Winner" one of the many themes is obsession and a person can perceive that reading throughout the whole short story. In "Cathedral" one of the main themes is understanding and to see that a person has to read the whole story and see that in the end. The difference between the two short stories "The Rocking Horse Winner" and "Cathedral" " are the ideas of each of the stories are so disparate.

Robert, the main character in Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral”, is the only blind man in the story. He is a caring, amiable man who even sets the narrator at ease. Robert visits the narrator’s wife after his own wife, Beulah, dies. He and the narrator’s wife have been listening to each other through the audiotapes they send back and forth during the past ten years. The narrator’s wife has recorded what she experiences including her marriage, suicide attempt, and divorce.