“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. The narrator’s inability to feel emotion causes him to value his wife’s body more than her emotions, therefore, he becomes jealous when the blind …show more content…
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). Robert loves his wife and views her as his soulmate rather than a body to fill empty space. Robert’s physical blindness does not hold him back from feeling, while the narrator’s emotional lack of sight proves more
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).
The narrator’s wife and Robert know each other at this point; Robert and the narrator are fairly unacquainted. However, because Robert, like the Christ, has an ability to gain the trust of the people around him, he is able to create a comfortable atmosphere even without
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
In contrast, Robert, who is blind, exemplifies the concept of seeing in a profound manner. Despite his lack of sight, Robert's interactions with the world are characterized by a deeper understanding and insight. He grasps the essence of people and situations by truly engaging with them, metaphorically looking at the world in its entirety. As the story progresses the narrator seems to have breakthroughs with Robert when it comes to his views of the world. This can be seen in the final lines of the story when the narrator states, “My eyes were still closed.
The narrator believes that blind people are not capable of loving someone other than themselves. Shortly into the story The narrator “Bub '' then learned that blind people are capable of doing things just like any other human being can do. He learns this when his wife says “They’d married, lived and worked together, slept together—had sex, sure—and then the blind man had to bury her.” He is then dumbfounded by the fact that Robert was still able to fall in love despite never seeing his wife's face. This is when the narrator began to sympathize with
In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” we are introduced to a narrator who tries to make it very clear to the reader that because he can physically see, he is better than the blind man, Robert. However, as we continue through the narrator’s interactions with Robert, it is shown that the narrator is actually quite blind to the world until Robert shows him otherwise. That is to say, the narrator can physically look at things around him, but lacks the kind of seeing that entails looking at things on a deeper level of engagement. This is the kind of seeing that allows Robert to truly see and understand things at a deeper level that the narrator would be oblivious to, such as his wife’s feelings, or even his own emotions. We get a clear vision about
The narrator finally understands how Robert can love a woman or even just eat dinner being blind, since looking is not as important as he once thought. The townspeople were also just as wrong about Miss. Emily. When Emily dies, the townspeople are let into
The husband, who is also the narrator of the story, is against the idea from the start. But as the story progresses, his views about the blind man and the blind in general changes. In the beginning of the story, the narrator clearly states, “And his being blind bothered me.
Robert literally can’t see, but he does obtain vision only on a deeper level. The narrator isn’t too enamored with the idea of another man coming to his home. He is insensitive and makes some harsh comments that make Robert feel a little uncomfortable. Due to his callous and unsympathetic personality, the narrator is never able to connect with his wife while Robert is instantly able to. Robert comes to visit the narrator and his wife at their home for the first time.
But he narrates what he knows and feels, he also afraid about his wife connection to the blind man. The narrator also shows that he has a difficult time understanding the difference between sight and understanding. The author uses different patterns when he writes, one that it's fascinating is the narrator almost never mention the names of Robert, for example in the line “This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night” (p.86). The narrator calls him ‘The Blind Man’ as if he did not know his name, but he did.
The narrator’s eyes are closed and he is being led by a blind man, yet he is able to see. Carver never explains what it is the narrator sees, but there is the sense that he has found a connection and is no longer detached or isolated. The narrator is faced with a stark realization and glimmer of hope. Hope for new views, new life and probably even new identity. Even the narrator’s wife is surprised by the fact that her husband and Robert really get along together.
The protagonist in Raymond Carver’s essay “Cathedral” is the husband of the wife in the story. From the start he was never too thrilled to be having the blind man stay with him in his home. He felt uncomfortable and he also had no idea what to expect because he had never been around a blind man before. After his wife falls asleep the man seems to slowly start to have a more open mind when it comes to the blind man. They start to talk and connect.
Sometimes they were led by seeing-eyed dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to”(1). The narrator judge Robert based off of his disability. He created an opinion of him solely based off the fact that Robert was blind. He decided that he wouldn’t like him and that he’ll be uncomfortable around him without even meeting him in person.
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.
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.