Blindness In Raymond Carver Cathedral

The narrator has perfectly acceptable vision, he can see his wife, and he can see and describe Robert: “this blind man, feature this, he was wearing a full beard! A beard on a blind man! Too much, I say” (181). He

Throughout the story, the narrator perceives Robert as an inadequate person, pathetic, needing help to find his way around and simply not being able to provide for himself. “But he didn’t use a cane and he didn’t

The narrator assumes that that he is more capable of making his own wife happy than Robert simply because he can see. When the narrator makes this assumption it shows that he doesn’t know the difference between seeing and understanding something more deeply for the true meaning.

The narrators statement at the very beginning of the story explains his own lack of knowledge about physical blindness. His lack of knowledge relating to the visitor’s disability is not deniable, yet he makes it very clear that he is aware of his ignorance, saying that he was not happy about his visit. “He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes seeing-eye dogs led them. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.” (90) These statements explain his entire attitude about Robert, the house guest, and other blind people in general at the onset of the story, giving the narrator an instant feeling of exactly who the narrator and even what he may turn out to be. While there are many undertones concerning other things about which he is

Once Robert arrives some, of the narrators assumptions about blind people are broke down immediately like when he mentions "He didn't use a cane and he didn't

The narrator is a character who is ignorant. Throughout the story, the narrator demonstrates his narrow-mindedness in many instances – especially when it comes to Robert’s blindness. Notably, the narrator speaks of how his assumptions regarding blindness have been adapted from what he has seen within movies. For much of the story, the narrator continually questions Robert’s abilities due to his blindness. From his choice to wear a beard to whether he will be able to eat his dinner on his own, the narrator comments on Robert’s choices. An example of this takes place when the narrator believes Robert would not smoke due to his blindness. The narrator remembers, “having read somewhere that the blind didn’t smoke because, as speculation had it, they couldn’t see the smoke they exhaled. I thought I knew that much and that much only about blind people.” (Carver 107). To the narrator’s surprise, Robert does in fact smoke. The narrator’s ignorance allowed for him to believe blindness would truly affect this in the first place. Furthermore, the narrator’s ignorance is also seen when he questions what Robert was wearing – explicitly his lack of dark glasses. While thinking on the topic, the

Throughout Robert’s visit, the narrator makes snide and insensitive remarks, despite his wife’s wishes. His misunderstanding of relationships and people is his visible flaw. It isn’t until the narrator

The narrator is pre-judgemental towards all people who are blind, whether or not he has met them. He believes all blind people are the same as those he has watched in movies. The narrator perception of the blind is that they “moved slowly and never laughed” and when they went out “they were led by seeing eye-dogs” (Carver 104). The movie industry creates a false image of the blind, which leads to the narrator’s assumptions. However, the blind are not all the same, just like how everyone else in the world are not the same. People are designed to be different in their personalities, thoughts, looks and much more. The narrator’s ideas of Robert are based off of false conceptions and this changes his attitude towards Robert. The narrator already has strong feelings towards Robert before meeting him

The husband first begins to open up to Robert when he watches with "admiration" as the blind man eats his food. He begins to see Robert as an independent man that has learned to live life despite his disability. There is a moment of connection when they all three finally begin the meal and he describes them as if they were all the same, eating the same way, intently and "seriously" (351). The husband asks to share a joint with Robert when his wife is not present, showing an indication of trust or maybe cockiness (352). Though shocked of her husband's actions, the wife joins in when she returns. When the wife has passed out between them, he commences to enjoying Robert's presence. When Robert wishes to stay up with him, listening to the television, the husband makes the

“Cathedral” by Raymond Carver is a story that shows the sense of sight in relation to vision, but it shows that the sense of sight requires a much deeper engagement. The narrator, who Robert calls “Bub,” is astonishingly shortsighted or “blind” while the blind man is insightful and perceptive. Bub is not blind, but Robert is. Therefore, he assumes that he is superior to Robert. His assumption correlates with his idea that Robert is unable to make a female happy, nor is he able to have a normal life. Bub is convinced his ability to see is everything. So, he fails to look deeper than the surface and is why he doesn’t know his wife adequately. However, Robert sees much deeper than the narrator, although he cannot look at the surface. Robert’s ability to look deeper helps him understand through his listing and sense of touch. Throughout Robert’s visit, the narrator reveals he is closed minded and exposes how he views life in general. Bub is clobbered and it brings him to the epiphany that his views about Robert are actually a mirror image of how he views his life. His epiphany is shown through the author's use of appearance vs reality, irony, and vernacular dialogue; which shows Bub’s preconceived notations, the connection formed between Bub and Robert, and how out of obliviousness Bub gained insight.

The narrator in the “Cathedral” displays a lack of insight and self-awareness that, in many ways, makes even him blinder than Robert. The narrator is shown to have trouble understanding the thoughts and

People who judge a person based on such a characteristic only see the particular aspect of the person that makes them uncomfortable. They are unable to see the whole person. The narrator unconsciously places Robert in a category that he deems uncommon, which prevents him from seeing the blind man as an equal.

The speaker puts Robert in a category that stops him from seeing him as an individual, yet receives an eye-opening experience through the blind man’s knowledge and

The story returns to the present as the wife prepares dinner. She subtly points out how the narrator is unhealthily detached and disconnected from the world around them. The wife goes to pick up Robert from the depot, while the narrator waits at home. Robert and the wife arrive, and she introduces the narrator to the blind man. The narrator takes in his appearance, and is surprised that Robert does not look like a stereotypical blind man with dark glasses and a cane.

In the beginning of the story, the husband, who is the narrator of “Cathedral,” seems to be a very ignorant, uncaring man. Nesset wrote “Walled in by his own insecurities and prejudices, this narrator is sadly out of touch with his world and with himself, buffered by drink and pot and by the sad reality, as his wife puts it, that he has no ‘friends’” (Nesset 124). The narrator has no connection to himself or the outside world. He has no friends, as his wife points out, which goes to show he keeps to himself, but he still doesn’t fully understand who “himself” is, because he doesn’t have that connection to himself, thus leading to the drinking and drugs. He wasn’t used to change, so having a visitor come over to his house bothered him. The moment he saw Robert, the narrator began to change. When his wife pulled up with the blind man in the car and they got out of the car, he saw that Robert had a beard and he thought to himself, “This blind man, feature this, he was wearing a full beard! A beard on a blind man! Too much, I say” (Carver 35). The narrator had expected to see the blind man in the way they showed them in the movies, but now that his idea of who Robert was as a person was being challenged, the change started to appear. Robert, who is a static character, is very essential in the change of the narrator. It is because Robert is the way he is, his marrying of a colored woman, his travels around the