Analysis Of Raymond Carver 's Cathedral

The husband of course was not sure about this because he didn’t even know the man. He didn’t know why they contacted each other so much or why he was coming. The wife and husband had been through hardships the past couple of years and it seemed like the blind man was what was keeping his wife going. They were in the living room having conversations and to the husband it seemed like all of the talk was all about the blind man. There was no talk about the husband and it seems like he just felt like he was left out. They had been in contact for so long and the husband honestly just kind of held a grudge toward the blind man. Much of the talk the whole night was about the blind man and what he had done and accomplished and it just set the husband on ease. Just the little things such as turning the T.V. on set his wife into a rage and the husband just didn’t know what to do. As the night went on they had supper and multiple drinks and were now just in the living room having conversations. The husband and the blind man slowly started to conversate more and more about different things and the wife was getting tired. The two were watching T.V. and just starting communicating a much better whenever the husband's wife had stepped out to change into a robe because she was getting tired. The husband began coming more relaxed and was just feeling more comfortable. They joked and discussed what was going on T.V.. The wife had finally come back and sat between them a gradually fell asleep as they were watching

In Cathedral, by Raymond Carver, a blind man guides the narrator towards an epiphany: he needs to see situations and people in a deeper way, rather than just from a materialistic point of view. In the beginning of the story, the narrow-minded speaker is originally opposed to having the blind man, Robert, stay in his home. Because the narrator realizes that there is a nothingness in his life, he eventually grows to admire Robert’s ability to have faith in people, relationships, and the world even though he cannot see. When the narrator closes his eyes while the two men are drawing a cathedral, his spiritual growth in the story becomes apparent to the reader and to himself because he notices that by drawing with such passion, he has begun to

To be imaginative is to be a child. As a person ages, he is expected to mature into adulthood and to live in the real world. He is expected to abandon his childhood dreams and cultivate practicality and factuality. However, imaginations are not limited to unicorns and dragons; it is a skill a person must nurture to realize his dreams and desires. To be imaginative is to be a visionary. Without a vision, a person lacks the sight for compassion, curiosity, and self-consciousness. In this sense, imagination is not only to think outside the box, but also to search deeper inside. In the short story, “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, Carver develops the idea that a lack of imagination limits a person to the physical and visible world which leads to the blindness to the abstract world and rejection of the uncertain future. It is when a person opens his eyes to the unseen that he can create emotional connection with others and discover the profound truth inside himself.

In the story “Cathedral”, author, Raymond Carver, show the readers that a person does not need their eyes to see as sight has a deeper meaning for different people. Within the story, the narrator, husband, describe his experience with his wife’s longtime friend Robert, a blind man who came to visit after losing his own wife to cancer. The story takes place in the husband’s home somewhere in the East Coast near Connecticut. As the husband has a drink and waits for his wife’s arrival with Robert, the husband shows an uneasiness about Robert being blind. Upon their arrival, the husband notices how joyful and happy his wife is with Robert and does not understand why. Inside the home, the husband and Robert had a few drinks accompanied with light conversation until dinner where the husband is impressed at how the Robert can describe the foods there are eating. After the dinner, the husband leaves to the couch to watch T.V. The wife and Robert join the husband him shortly after. After the wife falls asleep on the couch, the husband stops on a channel where they speak of Cathedrals and the blind man want him to describe it. Unable to use descriptive word to help Robert see, Robert asks the husband to draw the Cathedral on a paper thick enough so Robert can feel the lines. Robert joins hands with the husband as he draws on the paper and begins to visualize what a cathedral looks like while the husband has an insight on how to see through the eyes of a blind person, so to speak. The

In the beginning the narrator is un-named, we read the story as thoughts within his mind. His actions gives-off a sense of jealousy. He’s bothered by the former relationship the blind-man and his wife has had in the past. He is blunt and honest with (us) in telling how he feels about the situation. “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me.” “A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.” The narrator gives us the introduction to the life event. He tells us about his wife and how she met the blind-man. In short, she formally worked for him, reading him things when she lived in Seattle for a summer. The narrator mentioned when the blind-man touched around his wife face and her current marriage with her childhood sweetheart. Her husband at the time was in the military –industry, which caused her to have to move a lot. She and the blind-man kept in touch by sending voice recorded

In the narrative, the author writes the story in first person point of view through an unnamed narrator which enables the reader to visualize, experience, and perceive a deeper insight into his mind. The story commences with the narrator speaking directly to the audience appearing closed-off and narrow-minded. His wife has an old friend named Robert, who happens to be blind, coming to spend the night. Right away, the reader can sense how the narrator comes off as self-absorbed. He`s only concerned about how Robert’s visit will affect him and is inconsiderate about the strong bond Robert and his wife have built over the years. The narrator also lacks self-awareness when he found himself thinking “what a pitiful life this woman must have led.” (Carver 3) The woman being Beulah, Robert`s recently deceased wife, who the narrator belittled as she married a blind man and now she “could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one.” (Carver 3) Not realizing that with

I enjoyed reading “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver. The story is realistic, relatable, and meaningful. The main protagonist, Bub, is arrogant and superficial. Because of Robert’s intimate relationship with his wife, he does not like the blind man. To cover up the fact that he is jealous, he states that he never had a blind man in his house before and that Robert does not have the characteristics he thought blind people have. Robert does not wear glasses, has a beard and etc. On page 90 he says, “I always thought dark glasses were a must for the blind.” This shows that even before he met Bub, he already had some preconceived picture of Bub that hinders him from really getting to know the real Bub. However, towards the end of the story he seems

“Cathedral” by Carver isn’t a story that immediately grabbed my attention. By the way that the story is written to the actual story itself, it was missing something that made me want to continue reading it at first, but then I realized that there is a purpose for it being that way. I felt disconnected because that’s how the husband felt. This story had more to it than the author lead on. After looking back at the story I realized that although one of the characters is blind, it’s actually two that were blind and the second being the husband.

At the beginning of the story the husband is telling of a blind man coming to visit him and his wife. The narrator?s wife had worked for the blind man at one point. Since then they have maintained a strong friendship and keep in touch with tapes. The narrator talks about not looking forward to the blind

Cathedral is a capitivating story based on the lives of the narrator, his wife and a blind man. Raymond Carver is the author of this story, and he does an excellent job allowing the reader to delve into the lives of these characters. Through using the thoughts of the narrator, the reader is able to grab our attention because the story is made more realistic. The views expressed by the narrator in many senses exemplify the views of many in society and therefore the reader is able to make an emotional connection through the story.

“My wife looked at me with irritation. She was heading towards a boil. The she looked at the blind man and said, ‘Robert, do you have a TV?’” (Carver 37) The main character’s wife was important because she consistently tried to make her blind guest feel welcomed and facilitate to her husband that Robert, though he was blind, was still an able man. She was an asset for this story to unfold. The reader can conclude that without her help in the beginning, the two men, particularly the main character, would find it difficult to start a civilized conversation. Although it took some assistance, the protagonist started unfolding after dinner, when the two men where left along to talk, drink, and smoke. It is noticeable how he went from resentful to more open as time went by. When the two men were watching television alone, the main character patiently kept Robert up to date on what was going on. Within such a short period of time, the main character’s heart towards Robert was notably altered from the beginning where he was distant and quiet to the middle and towards the end where he appeared more vulnerable and

P1:1 “Freedom,” written in English 363, analyzes (formalism approach), Frederick Douglass’, “Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” that expresses Douglass’ human condition/need for freedom from slavery. Douglass writes about his wish for freedom from slavery during the 1800’s (Douglass Ch 1). Douglass has a good life with his first master, and he learns to read, but his second owner treats him cruelly and then he seeks freedom from slavery (Douglass Ch 1). Douglass in his poem to the ships reflects upon one Sunday afternoon (like many other Sundays) when he is off from work and near the water admiring the passing ships and wishing for his freedom from slavery (Douglass Ch 10). Douglass believes that all slaves wish for freedom from

The notion of possessing an intrinsic bias is introduced in Raymond Carver’s Cathedral. He highlights how perception can affect the way people interact and communicate with each other for the first time. In the short story, the narrator himself is blind to the emotions of the people around him and eschews any form of self-reflection until the very end. He is envious of the blind man, who shares an intimate relationship with the narrator’s wife. However, the blind man is depicted as insightful and personal. Carver discloses in Cathedral that Robert, the blind man, and the narrator’s wife had been exchanging audiotapes for years, sharing their experiences and difficulties with one another.

Throughout the middle of the story, the narrator is discriminatory towards blind people but suddenly feels the need to make Robert feel comfortable just because it will please his wife. The narrator and his wife were in the kitchen talking, and then the wife says “If you love me, you can do this for me. If you don’t love me, okay. But if you have a friend, any friend, and the friend came to visit, I’d make him feel comfortable” (116). To show that her husband is still prejudice towards blind people, he replies and says “I don’t have any blind friends” (116) which gets his wife upset because Robert is her friend. When the narrator says that he does not have any

Raymond Carver’s characters were considered to be very much like him: “’on the edge: of poverty, alcoholic self-destruction, loneliness” (Mays 32). His short story “Cathedral” is about a young couple, who have a visitor coming to stay with them. This visitor, Robert, is the wife’s friend, and he is blind. The narrator, the husband, has never met someone who is blind, was bothered by that. To him, being blind meant constantly needing help from others. His depiction of blindness was what he has seen in the movies. “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit… A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to,” he tells the reader (Carver 32). His wife on the other hand, was very happy to see her old friend. She had worked for Robert