Raymond Carver Cathedral Essay

The narrator quickly falls out of the conversation; however, he highlights that even though he does not enjoy Robert’s presence, he does not want to be perceived as rude by him. He explains how every “now and then [he] joined in [the conversation. He] didn’t want [Robert] to think [he’d] left the room.” By listening to the chatting between his wife and Robert, the narrator begins to think of Robert as a “blind jack-of-all-trades,” and he starts to feel jealous of the relationship that his wife and Robert share. The main reason behind the narrator’s resentment is due to his lack of a healthy relationship with his wife; the narrator even points out how he “waited in vain to hear [his] name on [his] wife’s sweet lips [during her conversation with Robert]...But [he] heard none of the sort.” The palpable tension between the couple along with the discomfort that Robert creates causes the narrator to feel out of place in his own home.

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.

"Cathedral" is a short story ultimately about enlightment, finding something more meaningful and deeper with in one self. Although from an observing point of view nothing more in the story happens then a blind man assisting the narrator in drawing a cathedral. Although as known, the narrator's experience radically differs from what is actually "observed". He is enlightened and opened up to a new world of vision and imagination. This brief experience will have a life long effect on him. The reason for this strong and positive effect is not so much the relationship made between the blind man and the narrator or even the actual events leading up to this experience, but rather it is mostly due to what was drawn by the narrator.

One of these main lessons I believe was that there is a difference between physically seeing and perceptively seeing. Although Robert was not able to see things physically like the narrator, he was able to perceive things in a way that the narrator could not. This could be seen when it came to Robert and the narrator's wife. Even though the Robert was unable to see the narrator's wife, he could perceptively see her, understand her, and listen to her in a way the narrator was unable to. He understood her problems and poetry, and give her companionship in a way that the husband did not see that she needed. From the beginning of the story, the narrator gave the impression that he believed he was better than the blind man because he had physical sight. After realizing the blind man understood his wife more and during the last moments when the two of them drew a cathedral together, the narrator's perspective changed.

The life of the unnamed wife was a series of events. She received a job reading to a blind man in Seattle named Robert who she became very fond of. After some time, the wife married her childhood sweetheart who was a part of the military and ended up moving away. She kept in touch with Robert throughout her time overseas, the divorce and the marriage to her new husband. The two kept in touch, but began to drift apart until Roberts wife died and he came to visit the unnamed narrator and wife (Carver p.32-35). Once Robert walked through the door his appearance and personality surprised the narrator greatly. In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” the narrator is constantly judging Robert because of his disability. The narrators’ analysis of the

This seems to unsettle the husband, as he notices that his wife has a stronger connection with Robert than they have in their marriage. The husband is blind to his wife’s feelings and needs in their relationship, and this lack of communication between them has affected their marriage. His wife wrote a poem about her experience with the blind man touching her face, and he brushed it off by stating that, “[He] can remember not thinking much about the poem” (33). The blind man however acts as an outlet for the wife to vent about her feelings which forms a close bond between the two. Robert can understand the speaker’s wife in a way that the speaker clearly is not able to. The narrator mentions that he believes Robert’s wife, Beluah, must have led a miserable life because she, “could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loves one. A woman who could never go on day after day and never receive the smallest compliment from her beloved” (34). He believes that the blind man’s wife must have suffered due to his inability to see her, yet the narrator has never even truly seen his own wife. Robert’s friendship with the speaker’s wife is what his own marriage is lacking due to not being able to recognize that his wife needs an emotional connection with him.

This shows how the narrator was about his knowledge of cathedrals and when the blind man asks

The narrator’s blindness is certainly not limited to Robert—he no better understands the relationship between his wife and the blind man:

Robert isn't just his wife's friend he means a lot to her in which he helped her get through difficulty in the past. To the man Robert is just his wife's friend from ten years ago and starts showing jealousy towards Robert. The narrator can't see if this visit has any meaning to his wife or not. The only thing he can see is his feelings and doesn't let the outside world affect him. Most stories show us that people have a problem within them self but rarely show them realizing their problems. While drawing with Robert when the narrator closes his eyes and then he realizes what see actually meant. When the man tries to describe the cathedral he fails to do so. He knows he can physically see the cathedral, but isn't able to describe it to Robert until Robert makes him draw with his eyes closed the man realizes a cathedrals true importance. While drawing with his eyes closed the narrator is stunned and just realizes what true sight feels like for the first

At these point the story the narrator says, "He is not someone I knew" this shows that he really does not care about the blind man even though is his wife's friend. In his mind, the blind man cannot do anything because he cannot see things, in the narrator mind the Rober needs to have someone to guide

The narrator’s wife used to work with Robert who is blind and whose wife, Beulah, had recently died from cancer. However, the narrator is not thrilled about it because apparently blind people are depressing and sad from general assumptions he has seen on TV. When Robert finally arrived, they had dinner together and went very well. After dinner, the narrator’s wife left to change clothes and the narrator rolled up two marijuana joints for them to smoke while watching TV. The wife fell asleep on the couch after smoking a bit of it and left the two men to “bond”. While watching TV and Robert listening, the narrator turns to a documentary on Cathedrals and fascinated Robert. So Robert asks the narrator to describe what it looks like because he can’t seem to picture it, but the narrator couldn’t be able to describe it. Robert asked the narrator to draw it for him while both of them are holding the pencil as the narrator is drawing it. While the narrator is drawing it, Robert tells him to close his eyes and while his eyes were closed he experiences something amazing. As if he feels like he is inside the Cathedral as he’s drawing

The story “Cathedral” demonstrates that lack of sight does not necessarily prevent one from perceiving things as they are, or live their life to the fullest. In the story, a middle-age blind man, who is a friend to the narrator’s wife, and used to be her boss at one point, visits the narrator and his wife. The narrator has never interacted with blind people before, and all he knew about blind people was what he had seen on television. Blind people are stereotypically portrayed on television as slow moving, dull people, who never laugh. Based on this perception, the narrator was reluctant to meet the blind man and doubted whether they were going to connect. This is evident when the narrator states, “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me” (Carver 1).

The reader first learns of the narrator's prejudices toward the world around him and especially to the seeing impaired in the introduction of the story. His biased opinion comes out when he explained, "My idea of blindness came from the movies… the blind moved slowly and never laughed"(P720). The narrator's narrow-minded conclusion brought forth the idea that the blind were no fun, and therefore no good to have around. "A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to"(P720). Another example of how the narrator's blurred vision affected his train of thought, was when he was trying to imagine what it must have been like for Robert's wife, Beulah. "… What a pitiful life this woman must have led"(P722). "Pathetic"(P722). The reader also catches a sense of jealousy coming from the narrator, directed toward the relationship Robert and his wife have. The fact that they were talking about him behind his back really agitated this jealousy. "I heard my own name in the mouth of this stranger, this blind man I didn't even know"(P721)! The degree of

Throughout “Cathedral” the narrator assumes himself to be superior to the blind man, Robert, making snippy comments about his disability and rationalizing that his blindness prevents Robert from doing normal tasks to pleasing his wife. When his wife begins to