In the short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the narrator describes the night when his wife’s blind friend, Robert, comes to visit. From the very beginning of the story, the husband is not thrilled about the upcoming visit and makes sure to express his disdain in various ways. This is because he does not understand Robert’s disability and how it both has and has not affected his way of life. It is because of this that the husband can be seen as a “blind” man as well. In the beginning of the story, before Robert arrives, the wife and husband begin talking about him.
The husband stared in amazement when it was Robert’s turn, he "held the smoke, and then let it go. It was like he’d been doing it since he was nine years old.” Finally the wife goes upstairs, Robert turns on the television and a cathedral shows up on the screen. The husband "rises with the spirit of the blind man as, with eyes closed and pen on paper, he leads the blind man’s hand over what he imagines the contours of a cathedral would be.” When they are done Robert wants the husband to look, but he has his eyes closed because he "thought it was something [he] ought to do." It was at this time, the husband “sees” Robert as a human with the same feeling, ideas and emotions as
“We’ll draw one together”. (110) As Robert held the narrator’s hand, he started to draw a cathedral and he could see it in his mind. He asked the narrator to close his eyes while he was drawing. When Robert thought they were finished with the drawing, he asked him to take a look at it and tell him what he thought. (130) The narrator didn’t want to open his eyes, he could still see the cathedral in his mind and described it as “really
Cathedrals would become the next section of the show, drawing the attention of both men as they watched and listened. They would speak about the buildings, the narrator trying as much as he could to describe the architecture from the spires to the buttresses, and even though he would deny his ability to properly explain, Robert was not bothered. Instead, the blind man would opt for another solution that would deter the narrators’ way of thinking to something both men could feel. Asking for the narrator to grab heavy paper and something to write with, the two would begin to draw the cathedrals neither could truly see. As the paper became marked with windows and arches and buttresses the narrator would begin to feel something that was “like nothing else in (my) life up to now” when he closed his eyes.
The husband’s actions and behavior change drastically throughout “Cathedral”. He went from a stubborn attitude towards Robert to being sympathetic at the end. The very first line of Cathedral the husband refers to Robert as “this blind man”, which gives you a little taste of his attitude towards blind people. The husband isn’t very enthusiastic about Robert coming to stay with him and his wife because Robert
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.
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.
He no longer thinks the blind man is worthless. At that moment, he relates with the blind man and finally understands the struggles the blind man goes through. Before drawing the Cathedral, the husband would waste his time
In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” the narrator in the story a man who could not clearly see the world around him, has a limited awareness about blindness. He went from being a little prejudiced and superficial to having a break through by socializing with a blind man. Beneath the surface he finds a revelation about himself. In the beginning of the story the protagonist the narrator in “Cathedral” seems narrow- minded and an insensitive person. He is prejudice and clearly has some flaws about how he perceives others around him with disabilities.
They start to talk and connect. The turning point for the man was when the blind man made him close his eye as they were drawing the Cathedral. The man finally saw what the blind man saw and it changed his whole outlook on life. In Porter’s essay the protagonist is Maria Concepcion. I did not finding surprising that she killed Maria