Blindness In Cathedral

While they are watching television, Robert tells the narrator to fetch a piece of heavy paper. Lastly, the narrator and Robert draw a picture of a cathedral together so Robert can get a better idea of a cathedral. In the story “Cathedral,” the narrator’s thoughts, actions, and feelings reveal the theme that even when unexpected, one can learn something from meeting new people. In

In the short story Cathedral, written by Raymond Carver, a blind man, a friend of the narrator’s wife comes and stays with them overnight. In this visit, the narrator is able to overcome his own blindness and open his eyes to a new view. It is shown that it is in a character’s personality that a story’s action comes about and the plot is developed. Carver uses the characterization of the narrator in this story to give conflict and resolution as well as bringing about the idea that “they’re no different from the rest

From the very beginning of the story, it is easy to pick up on the fact that the narrator does not have much of a social life outside of the house. When he speaks of the tapes his wife and the blind man send back and forth, he refers to them as, “harmless chit chat.” He does not see the point in the conversations they have, or why they mean so much to his wife. Later, when the narrator is complaining to his wife about not having a blind

He is humorous, yet somehow finds a way to connect to his audience and engage them in the story. Barry talks directly to his audience when writing. He goes into and out of ‘academic’ style and uses informal language to make a connection to the readers. Barry makes his readers feel like they are reading a book written by a good friend, not someone they have never met before. He does this to embrace his story telling for the differences between guys and men.

The narrator became more humane and truthful with Robert because he was gained some insight into what life is like for Robert. When narrator closes his eyes and meditate, he can also experience the world and gain some sense of just how different that experience is from his own. He can now kind of anticipate or understand

Now the wife is asleep at this point, so the narrator is truly doing this out of kindness. After a while, the narrator realizes that the blind man cannot see the television. At this moment, he decides to describe the cathedral on the television (94). Thus, he is striving to aid the blind man to comprehend what he sees. The smoking and television discussion sparks a change in the narrator; however, this change progresses once he holds the blind man’s

Sometimes in life, people will have to deal with other people that are judgmental and listen to stereo types when they know nothing about the person. In the short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, there are some examples of stereotyping. This story is about a woman who has a good friend of hers and he is blind. The blind man, whose wife had just recently died and was traveling to go visit his family, was stopping at the women’s house overnight. The blind man and the narrator’s wife knew each other.

In the beginning of the story “Cathedral”, the narrator has a negative attitude towards Robert. He refers to him as ‘the blind man’ for a majority of the story. The narrator seems jealous of his wife’s friendliness when she offers Robert to stay at their house after his wife dies of cancer. Robert finally arrives to their house one evening and the narrator begins to ask him questions like “Which side of the train did you sit on by the way?” thinking the blind man wouldn’t know. He makes several comments like this throughout the story, but drawing the Cathedral with ‘the blind man’ becomes a life changing experience for the narrator.

In the novel “Cathedral” By Raymond Carver, many themes and motifs are subtlety hinted throughout, a major motif that stood out to me was the presence of sight throughout the story and what deeper meaning it has towards the characters. “Cathedral” is a short story about a dissatisfied man who timidly allows his wife’s old friend stay at their house after his wife passes away. The man’s name is Robert and he happens to be blind this unsettles the narrator because of his preconceived notions and expectations of what a blind person should be like. As the story goes on the reader realizes that maybe the narrator may be the one who actually cannot see the world around him, which leads to an Epiphany. Blindness is a dominant motif in this story, and it serves multiple metaphorical functions.

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 he was on his way to spend the night.

Noah Starr Robin Thomas ENGL 1102 31 Jan 2016 Theme of “Cathedral” In the short story “Cathedral”, Raymond Carver tells a story through a narrator who is blind with jealousy and cannot see, Robert, a physically blind man in mourning, yet he is caring, easy going, and the final character, the narrator’s wife who is the bridge between them. These two men live in separate worlds, and now through the inciting incident of the death of Robert’s wife, their two worlds collide. Beginning the first day she answered Robert’s help wanted ad, he and the narrator’s wife have been longtime friends. In “Cathedral” Raymond Carver uses this story combining a narrator’s preconceived notions of the blind, who is angered by Robert, an artifact of his wife’s past,

Robert’s wife has recently died and he used to work for the narrator’s wife. Robert comes to visit the narrator’s home and the narrator is not happy about this because he believes blind people to be miserable and gloomy based solely on what he has absorbed from the movies. At the end of the first paragraph, he says, “A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (1.1). Little to the narrator’s knowledge, his wife and Robert had been using audio tape to correspond over ten years, and have much past history with each other. The narrator’s wife makes sure he knows to make Robert comfortable, and if he doesn’t it shows that he does not love her.

He thinks of Margo as an event or force in his life — a “miracle” that happens to him — rather than as a person whose existence is separate from his. Margo and Quentin are very different. When they discovered the dead man, it was like an intrusion on Quentin’s innocence, breaking up their play date. However, Margo’s fascination with the body and apparent comfort in the presence of death suggests she is not so childlike as Quentin is himself, or as he remembers her. Quentin had a conversation with his therapist mother, and went to bed the following night after the discovery of the dead man.