Within modern day society, there are many people who have eyesight cannot “see.” This sad truth is reflected within the husband who cannot connect with his wife because he displays a lack of insight. As the protagonist of the short story Cathedral, the husband had to undergo a certain change within the story in order to connect with his wife, who actually tends to be the antagonist. Through the usage of the husband’s language, behavior, and interaction with other characters–the author, Raymond Carver proves that it is possible to “see” once one accepts change. Within the beginning of Cathedral, the narrator who happens to be the husband, starts to describe his wife’s friendship with a blind man known as Robert. This blind man and the wife had something the husband’s marriage lacked–communication. He could not understand how the blind man Robert was able to marry, have sex and sleep together with his wife, Beulah. The husband started felt sorry for Robert: Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved ones (Carter 262). However, he was simply assuming that looking at Beulah mattered …show more content…
As soon as the narrator gathers the items to create the drawing of the cathedral, the blind man closed his hand over the narrator's hand as the narrator began to draw. The narrator was already able to put himself in the shoes of Robert before drawing, and through drawing the cathedral, he empathized with the blind man to the point where he finally understood how the blind man was able to see without his eyesight. The narrator had finally awakened his true eyesight, and when Robert told him he could open his eyes, the narrator did not open his eyes, because he realized there was no need for him to open his eyes when he could already picture the cathedral he drew within his
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 the opening sentence of “Cathedral”, the narrator identifies Robert as “this blind man” as opposed to the various other labels he could heap upon him (Carver 514). The narrator also propagates the idea that “the blind move slowly and never laugh”, an illogical stereotype. This is not dissimilar to Jesus’s discriminatory treatment at the hands of the Romans as he conceptualized Christianity and spread his message to the people. Robert and the narrator have a Christian communion experience of sorts that
From that moment, the narrator show his true side to me. It shows that he doesn’t not care about his wife feeling toward the blind man. After carefully reading “cathedral”, the narrator is jealous of the blind man relationship with his
Cathedral how blindness is used as a metaphor. “Cathedral” is a passionate story by Raymond Carver about a blind man who is trying to find company after his wife passed away. Overall, the story is a funny situation, in which the blind man leads the narrator outside of his comfort zone. One of the biggest metaphors during the story is the blind man, or the blind leading the blind. At the end of the story, both men collaborate on a drawling of a cathedral.
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.
Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” is a short story that unfolds through the perspective of Bub. The story begins with the depiction of Bub’s narrow-mindedness and as the story progresses, it becomes clear that his perspective shifts after an encounter with his wife’s blind friend Robert. It’s through his encounter that he has an epiphany. His jealousy towards Robert and intoxication that debunk his preconceived notations and highlight the connection between him and Robert. Only, after his epiphany that he’s drawn out of his obliviousness and he gains insight.
As the story develops, the narrator grows to like Robert, and as the story ends we see the two draw a cathedral together which allows the narrator see a new side of everything and allow for him to be more connected to the blind man and his wife. This plot is commonly seen in many different media’s, but it’s used more cleverly here, as it allows for characters to flow with the story while not sacrificing the story being mediocre. In saying this, the plot of this story is very character-centric and is vital to helping to advance the story. Within this story the character
In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” written in 1983, the author points out that empathy and perspective are the only way to truly experience profound emotion. The narrator is struggling is sucked into his own comfort zone, he drowns his dissatisfaction on life, marriage, and job in alcohol. A man of limited awareness breaks through his limitations by socializing with a blind man. Despite Roberts physical limitations, he is the one who saved narrator from himself and helped him to find the ones vies of the world.
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.
Contrasting the narrator, Robert feels love, rather than physically “seeing” it, an emotion the narrator is incapable of. The narrator wonders “who’d want to go to such a wedding in the first place” (Carver 2) considering the wedding consisted of “just the two of them, plus the minister and the minister’s wife” (Carver 2). Instead of viewing marriage as a celebration of the love between two people, he sees marriage as a tangible ceremony focused on physicality. Because of Robert inability to see, the narrator discounts Robert and his wife’s love for each other. Their marriage was “beyond [his] understanding… they’d married, lived and worked together… and then the blind man had to bury her… without his having ever seen what [she] looked like” (Carver 2).
After a small introduction when the two characters first meet, the narrator recognizes that he “didn’t know what else to say” (Carver, 4), signifying his inability in connecting with Robert. A reason behind the trouble in connecting is discussed in “Literary Analysis of Cathedral” by Niwar A. Obaid, where he writes “The narrator’s apparently judgmental and doubtful tone… [set] a difficult attitude once the blind man and the narrator actually meet”. Obaid lists the narrator’s tone as one of the primary reasons why the narrator is reluctant to get to know Robert better. Since the narrator’s tone is caused by his prejudices, as previously shown, one can infer from Obaid’s writing that the real reason behind the narrator’s reluctance to form a relationship is his prejudice against the blind. Later in the story, Carver juxtaposes Robert’s readiness to learn more about the narrator to the narrator’s initial refusal to develop a relationship to Robert.
Throughout the story the reader can affirm that the wife has a deep, strong relationship with the blind man. The wife and the blind man share an intimate and vulnerable moments together; one includes when she lets him touch her face so he can remember her. Similarly, the narrator gets to share an intimate moment with Robert that leads to an epiphany. The epiphany that the narrator experiences when drawing a cathedral refers to seeing life from Robert, the blind man’s, point of view and seeing the struggles as well as life experiences a blind man must encounter on a daily basis.
With this, readers could sense that the narrator is jealous, grouchy, and angry that Robert’s presence affects the narrator’s wife because of the connection between both the wife and Robert. The author prepares readers for the enlightenment when Robert came for a visit and that is how cathedral came about. The narrator explains, “The TV showed this one cathedral” (110). In this scene, the narrator and Robert bonded about the appearance of the cathedral. Instantly, the narrator says to Robert, “Do you have any idea what a cathedral is?
Robert asks about the narrator’s religion which brings them to the topic of Cathedrals. Since Robert is blind he doesn’t know exactly what a Cathedral is and only can picture a normal building and what he thinks it might be like. As they continue to talk, Robert asks for some paper and a pen. Robert takes Bub’s hand and tells him to draw a Cathedral. Robert continues to cheer Bub on and continue drawing.
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