Real Life And Ideas In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

Both stories represent different interpretations of blindness/reality vs. expectations concepts of the relationships between real life and ideas in similar ways. In both “Cathedral” and “Araby” the authors tell stories about how people make their own judgments in their own mind that different from reality. In the story "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver, the narrator is not blind but he never looked at his wife’s need as being her childhood sweetheart. “Over the years, she put all kinds of stuff on tapes and sent the tapes to the blind man including about her divorce” (Carver 138). This shows the husband’s being blind, not knowing his wife very well. He was not seeing the reality of life even though, she was telling him about Robert’s back and forth audiotape

The story shows that the little boy’s has misconception between the real and the ideal life. He is blind with his own imagination. He develops passion with his friend, Magan’s, sister. He describes his own blind idea, “At night in my bedroom and by day in the class room her image came between me and the page I strove to read. The syllables of the word Ababy were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me” (Joyce 319). He was blind with his own imagination; the narrator is in love with Mangan’s sister. According to the narrator, going to the bazaar is a perfect opportunity for his romantic relationship and buy gift for the person whom he puts in his mind. But, “the tone of her voice wasn’t encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of s sense of duty” (joyce321). According to the narrator she isn’t giving him any attention. The conversation with other two young people reveals to the boy that his feelings for Mangan's sister and all his romantic delusions are nothing but a falsification; his feeling for Mangan’s sister was a