Y Idea Of Blindness In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

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?” (Carver, 2) Evidently, the imbecilic Narrator was feeling jealous through his thoughts and actions.

“His being blind bothered me” (Carver 1). In Raymond Carver’s short story Cathedral, Carver establishes an ignorant narrator, who is dependent on alcohol and fixated upon physical appearance; he juxtaposes the narrator to a blind man who sees with his heart rather than his eyes. Through indirect characterization, Carver contrasts the narcissistic narrator to the intuitive blind man while utilizing sight as a symbol of emotional understanding. He establishes the difference between looking and seeing to prove that sight is more than physical. Because of his narcissistic personality, the narrator views his wife as an object, while the blind man, Robert, treats her as a friend and a confidant.

Robert just replied to her saying they are drawing a cathedral. The blind man ran his fingers over the paper, and places his hand over the narrator which is the beginning to the narrator’s meaningful life lesson. The man with lots of prejudices against blind people, that jealous husband who thought that the blind man has feelings for his wife began to draw. Robert encourages the narrator to close his eyes and keep drawing. The narrator then understood the significant life lesson by saying “My eyes were still closed .I was in my house.

This short story is particularly short compared to most but it was a good story to help readers understand and identify tone and style. Readers can understand the elements by reading what the narrator has to say about the blind man. He is always complaining about him before the blind man even gets to his house. The narrator in the beginning did not give the blind man a chance before he started judging him. In a world full of negative things, people should give each other a chance to get to know one

Homer A. Barbee, a blind poet and storyteller, publically spoke to the people of the college, illustrating the life of the Founder. With his strong words and powerful imagery, Barbee makes the Invisible Man "see the vision" (133) and become completely oblivious to the fact that he is blind. I think that there is an interesting contrast in that Barbee is blind, yet he can "see" the God-like figure that the Founder is, while the Invisible Man, who can see, does not understand why Barbee praises him. Barbee's inability to see hinders his ability to be an precise judge of

This is the case for Oedipus. Oedipus, the main character of the play, is living in lies but he doesn 't even know until Theiresias, a blind man, reveals him the truth which due to is personal character refuses to accept until he becomes blind. This is from where the irony, blind but have sight, comes. Oedipus, King of Thebes, has sight but is blind to truth. Since he is born Oedipus was living in the lie.

When a person ponders the state of blindness, the first thought is usually the impairment of a person’s eyes or the loss of physical vision. However, those who can physically see may possess more blindness than those without sight. In Raymond Carver’s Cathedral, Robert is a blind man who shows the narrator how to look beyond his physical sight and truly “see.” Through interaction with him, Robert instructs the narrator to observe beyond the exterior of a person so as to recognize inner beauty. Drawing a cathedral gives the narrator an opportunity to recognize the deeper meaning of life and understand the significance of true sight. The narrator’s point of view about Robert has importance because it reveals how the willingness to open up and learn from

That idea of falsification is seen in the quote “My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movie, the blind, moved slowly and never laughed sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs” (Carver 265). Illustrating, societies high regard for the physical ability of seeing in his remark “seeing-eye dogs.” Furthermore, Carver suggests that our reliance on our physical senses, limit us our connection with others as seen in the narrator's relationship with his wife. Additionally, the representation of the eyes as a reflection of one’s soul, mind and heart suggests that be only seeing the physical depiction we create a smoking mirror that doesn’t reflect the truth but the physical view. In Carver’s essay “Cathedral”, the illustration of true sight as something that anyone can reach even without physical sight, exemplifies Carvers questions regarding the value of materialistic value of things including humans rather than the intrinsic

The story introduces the reader to a young lady named Madame Loisel who is a self-absorbed woman who never seems to be satisfied with what she has, no matter how much that may be. This is exhibited when it states in the text, “She suffered constantly, feeling that all the attributes of a gracious life, every luxury, should rightly have been hers.”(Maupassant 333). Not only that but she also has the arrogance to bring her poor husband into the matter by complaining to him whenever the mood strikes her to wish for something she can not have. Although as an eminent theme in many of these texts, her greed comes back to harm her and she does not escape unscathed. Covetously she tries to acquire a necklace that she could never own by herself.

The wife and Robert develop an unconventional and seemingly unlikely friendship (due to gender roles for those times). Carver masterfully and vividly guides the reader through the narrator’s first true and meaningful encounter with a blind man, who in turn, widely opens the narrator’s eyes to the true reality of blindness; not just the drawbacks. Through the seemingly simple act of drawing a cathedral on a shopping bag, the narrator is thrust into the blind man’s shoes, as he comes to understand how the blind man interacts and interprets the world. When the narrator first hears that Robert is coming to stay, he starts preparing for Robert’s stay by thinking of him almost as an opponent in some competition, with the narrator’s wife as the prize. The narrator degrades Robert and suggests various