Conflict is the essence of any literary fiction. The main goal of an author is to tell a story that keeps the reader interested. At the story’s core, conflict is the momentum of happening and change and is crucial on all levels for delivering information and building characterization as well as building the story itself. Conflict is the source of change that engages a reader and keeps them interested. In a story, conflict and action does what description and telling of feelings and situations do not. Narrated in the first person, Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” is bound to unfold due to the thoughts and feelings of one of the main characters, the husband. Expectedly, the conflict revolves around him and the way he responds to the conflict leads …show more content…
The story revolves around three characters, a husband who is also referred to as Bub, his wife, and a blind man, Robert. The story begins with the wife reminiscing back at the times that she shared with Robert. She continues to talk about how much she enjoyed spending time with him. She talks about how she has kept in touch with him and how she has even written about Robert before. Even though the narrator doesn’t directly state to his wife, he happens to be “irritated” (Facknitz) by the fact his wife tends to have a connection with Robert. One of the biggest issues in the story that “fuels the narrator’s jealousy” (Cathedral) is the fact Robert had touched her face. Carver writes “So okay. I’m saying at the end of the summer she let the blind man run his hands over her face” (Carver 78). The way this sentenced is written makes it seem like the narrator is in some sort of disbelief that his wife let another man touch her face. It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal however since the man is blind, him be able to touch her face is in a way intimate. Also, the narrator continues to bring up the fact they still continued to keep in touch after so many years. While the narrator is telling the story, he makes statements such as “But they’d keep in touch, she and the …show more content…
However, the story unwinds when Bub and Robert seem to have created some sort of bond. After hours of talking through the night the narrator happens to find out Robert isn’t as bad as he thought. He realizes Robert is just another man and poses no threat to him or his relationship with his wife. The two men stay up for hours talking about all sorts of things. Towards the end of the night the two men share a moment that ends the story well. 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. Robert then asks him to close his eyes and continue to draw this way. After the drawing is complete Bub keeps his eyes closed and this leads us to believe his is finally at peace with Robert being there. Bub states, “But I had my eyes closed. I thought I’d keep them that way for a little longer.” (Carver 87). With this statement, Bub insists keeping his eyes closed and he seems to feel
The narrator placed himself in Robert’s shoes and realized how inaccurate his perception about Robert was. By sketching a Cathedral, they were drawing a piece of art that represents a collaboration closer to sight. By sharing an intimate experience, Robert the physically blind man was able to help the unnamed narrator, metaphorically blinded prejudice man see his errors in his conscious and see things
The author use of the title “Cathedral” was misleading at first. “Cathedral” is about a husband who had an interesting experience with his wife’s blind friend. The narrator, also known as the husband, had difficulty understanding other people thoughts and personal feelings. The narrator knew how important the blind man is to his wife, yet he still makes careless jokes about him. “Maybe I could take him bowling” was a comment made by the narrator after finding out that the blind man was staying over his house.
Every so often a man experiences drastic changes in his body while being with his wife; his temperature rises, adrenaline increases, and his eyes dilate at the shock of what is happening. Indeed, this phenomena may mean several things some more pleasurable than others, but on occasion it is the actual state of anger and jealousy. In “Cathedral”, by Raymond Carver, the narrator is envious of the blind man, and is at the clemency of his emotions. However, as time passes the husband gradually overcomes his restless rage that blinds him, and becomes aware of the truth. This gradual transformation may be understood through the language and actions of the husband.
Robert kindly reassures the narrator and ultimately suggests the narrator draws a cathedral on heavy paper for him to feel. As the narrator draws, Robert runs his fingers over the lines, eventually finding the narrator’s hands. Although the narrator’s wife wakes up and asks what the two men are doing, she is ignored. The narrator continues to draw the cathedral with Robert’s hand over his until Robert tells him to close his eyes.
He realizes how smart Robert is, and he keeps being shocked as the night goes on. While listening to a show about Cathedrals, Robert asks the narrator to describe him a Cathedral. The narrator tries his hardest, but can not do it. To combat this, Robert takes the narrator's hand and has him close his eyes and together they draw the church just from memory. After drawing the Cathedrals, the narrator describes the picture as, “ It’s really something” (103).He learns how seeing is not everything in life, and how wrong he was with his assumptions about Robert.
Robert continues to try and build what he can of a relationship with the narrator, for instance, drawing the cathedral
The difference between the two of them guessing about cathedrals and the narrator making assumptions about blind people is that the activity is bringing them together instead of just being used to other someone else. In seeking knowledge about something they know little about, they are working together and forming the beginnings of a connection between them. When the narrator can’t adequately describe a cathedral to Robert, the same man he was criticizing not long before, he’s earnestly, truly apologetic; at this point, we can assume that he cares what Robert thinks of him, or else he wouldn’t be so hard on himself (286). This is also why he agrees to draw a cathedral with Robert, hand over hand, and shut his eyes then lie about having opened them when he really hadn’t. By this point, at the end of the story, the narrator has experienced some kind of change to himself as a person, considering Robert to possibly be something along the lines of a friend, at least enough to want to put himself in his shoes for a little
In the Raymond Carver stories “Cathedral” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” communication plays a major role in developing the story. In this essay I will analyze how the theme of communication plays both similar and different roles in developing the meaning of these two stories to further understand how communication effects the characters. Communication is an important part of the story to understand because it gives the reader a better understanding of the moral of the story as well as important life influences of the author. “Cathedral” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” are excellent to stories to compare their theme of communication because communication gives each story a unique meaning, but both stories use communication in different ways to do so. By exploring the different types of communication in these two stories it will be easier to understand the moral meaning of the stories but also how different types of communication can be more effective than verbal communication.
A Cathedral is a place for people to go and worship, to connect with God. By drawing the Cathedral the narrator is in some ways also making a connection. For the first time, he appears to be able to see. The narrator's ignorance and preconceptions fade away because he sees that although Robert has the gift of knowing and understanding people. There is also a sense of irony at the end of the story.
Communication is one of the most important aspects of human life. Without communication, we would be a primitive society of wild animals, unable to cooperate and achieve great feats, such as building the Pyramids, landing on the Moon, or organizing a democracy. All people rely on communication to express ideas that motivate positive societal and political change. Yet not everybody communicates in the same way. There are several thousand languages that people speak; there are several hundred thousand people around the world that suffer from disabilities such and blindness or deafness that require special means of communications such as braille or sign language.
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).
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.
Furthermore, the narrator is starting to realize that he enjoys Robert’s company as well as compelled to explore Robert’s eye sight limits, to help Robert visualize a cathedral. The narrator tries to describe a cathedral, but failed to do so, and retreats back into cynicism. The narrator’s response Robert’s question was, “the truth is, cathedrals don’t mean anything special to me. Nothing cathedrals.
He asks the narrator to find a pen and some paper so they can draw a cathedral together. The narrator brings some back. The blind man tells him to grab the pen, then puts his hand around the narrator's. The narrator draws a box that looks like a house. He adds spires, great doors and flying buttresses.
The narrator then proceeds to show Robert what a cathedral looks like by taking his hand and drawing a cathedral on “a shopping bag with onion skins in the the bottom of the bag.” (Carver 110) . Through this bricolage, the narrator closes his eyes and has an epiphany, for in this moment where his eyes are closed, hands intertwined, he truly sees, and “ ‘It’s really something,” (Carver 135). It’s the minimalistic approach that prefaces this big event that really showcases the theme. Carver’s use of colloquial language, in creation of an increasingly relatable scene allows for the reader to empathize with the narrator, allowing for a much stronger impact when the epiphany occurs and the story’s theme has been