Rhetorical Devices In Cathedral By Raymond Carver

Although, the narrator struggles with the misunderstandings behind his wife’s and the blind man’s relationship it becomes apparent that Robert was in fact married. The narrator is proven to have jealous thoughts and a biased opinion of what blind people are like, but he realizes that Robert was now widowed and has lost a woman that “never [saw] herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one” (Carver 458). Robert was the “husband [that] could never read the expression on her face, be it misery or something better” (458). These revelations are just a few that possibly help the narrator start to feel some comfort behind the upcoming visit.

Carver presents the reader with several instances in which the narrator fails to express empathy towards his peers and form a deeper connection with them. At the start of the story, the narrator explains that his wife, “worked with the blind man all summer. She read stuff to him, cause studies, reports, that sort of thing” (244). The narrator’s wife once worked for the blind man, and she chooses to welcome him into their home after his wife passed away from cancer. Even after learning the new of the loss of the blind man’s wife, the narrator makes it clear that, “a blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (244).

The narrator seems to be jealous of the amount of care his wife shows Robert. The narrator’s wife does several things for Robert that he is unable to do due to his blindness. “She [works] with this blind man all summer,” the narrator says. “She [reads] stuff to him, case studies, reports, that sort of thing” (20). This statement shows the narrator's jealousy toward the amount of attention his wife shows Robert.

The narrator (Bub) is characterised as being closed minded, and has a negative personality. He sits on the couch, smokes weed, drinks scotch and goes to bed. At the beginning of the story when Robert comes for a visit, the narrator is rude. The narrator doesn’t see people pass their physical appearance. He doesn’t look inside. The narrator says” I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me” (3). The narrator’s character makes him blind to the beautiful things in our world. The narrator is jealous of the connection between his wife and the blind man. He makes jokes about bringing Robert bowling. The narrator is jealous, and only focuses on the fact that he touched her face. He doesn’t see the deeper connection they have. He is blind. This is clear when the author writes “She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her nose, even her neck“(3). He also thinks about the blind man as a stereotypical blind man. He doesn’t seem to understand that there’s more to every blind man than a cane and sunglasses. He looks at people only on the outside. He thinks that the blind man can’t have a real connection. When Robert tells the narrator and his wife about his wife’s death, “I found myself thinking what a pitiful life this woman must have led” (4). Both Robert and the narrator are blind. The narrator is blind to the world. He can’t see people more than how they look on the outside. Throughout the story, he has a very flat tone. When they were talking about the blind man wife’s death, or when his wife attempts to commit suicide, he reduces the whole experience as her throwing up. He doesn’t sympathise with the blind man’s wife’s death or his wife’s attempted suicide. He doesn’t try to look at people on a deeper lever, rather he looks at the surface of every problem. He

The narrator didn’t like the blind man because of the way that his wife described what he did to her before she left and married her childhood sweetheart. He wanted to know why the blind man wanted to touch his wife’s face. As Carver quoted, “She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose – even her neck!”(62). He wasn’t sure how she let the blind man touch her face if he couldn’t see anything. The way that he reacted when his wife told him that she wrote poems about the blind man and he was slightly jealous because he wishes that his wife did the same thing for him since they were married. I think that the narrator was more jealous of how his wife and the blind would always send each other tapes based on what happened in their lives. As quoted, “She told him everything, or so it seemed to me” (Carver 63). He felt isolated from his wife because she told the blind man mostly everything and maybe there was a chance that the blind man was easier to talk to despite everything that happened to her. The narrator felt like he wasn’t good enough or wasn’t the type of person who was easy to talk to when it came to his wife. The way that narrator talked about the blind man was as if he envy him for the person that he was and the person his wife consider him as a best

Here, husband just cared about if this wife was a negro. During Robert visit, many reactions of husband reflect his short vision about blind people and what they can do, and also that they can be loved by the people who treat with them like his wife. He astonished that Robert was interesting to listen to the TV and also can analyze what he can listen. Husband was expecting the stereotyping image of the blind man which wears a black glasses and has a cane. He impressed when Robert called his "Bub, I'm a scotch man myself." And then drunk several rounds, and when he smoked cigarettes since he thought that blind people are not smoking. Husband admires Robert's proficiency with utensils and his willingness to use his fingers at times during the dinner. After his wife slept, he was driven crazy when Robert turned his ears to the program in the TV was showing specific information about one of the medieval artistic cathedrals and asked in the paintings were frescoes, but the narrator can't remember what frescoes are. On this situation the author was trying to end the story by showing how the difference in knowledge and vision between the two

In his short story “Cathedral” Raymond Carver uses a unnamed narrator to tell his story in a first person point of view. Other than his name we get to know that he has a wife who's blind friends, Robert, wife just passed away and is visiting her family in Connecticut. During Roberts stay in Connecticut he will be staying at their house. While the man was able to see perfectly from his eyes he wasn't able to see his surroundings and others feelings. On the other hand Robert was lacking eye sight but was able to understand people very well. The narrator feels bad for Robert because he has never seen his wife, but the truth is he saw and understood her in his own way. Sometimes we can see someone but cant really see what they are feeling or trying

The first introduction of the speaker introduces a personality of an insolent man that is emotionally unavailable to his wife and living a life of unfulfillment. In the first few pages, the speaker recalls the events leading up to the present moment when a blind man, Robert, will be

Even though Robert cannot see the narrator’s wife, he still has the ability to see and understand what she says. The narrator states, “The blind man made a tape. He sent her the tape. She made a tape. This went on for years.” After those statements, people understand that the wife wants someone to talk to and the narrator does not see that because he only looks at her and does not understand her wants and needs. Robert actually sees this and understands these wants and needs, and he is there to listen because he cannot see her, so he has to connect on a deeper level to understand her. The narrator only looks at his wife and does not put the effort into seeing because he thinks he is better than blind people are because he can see which is why he does not understand that she is unhappy in their relationship. Throughout the story the only dialogue between the narrator and his wife are little bits of conversation where he usually says something to annoy her, which shows he is only looking at the surface of her. By actually seeing through the surface of the narrator’s wife Robert makes himself a very important person in the wife’s life unlike the narrator who just looks at her, and does not care making himself worthless in his wife’s life because she cannot come talk to

In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the narrator can see but Robert is blind. They both have different views on life; one can actually see the physical world and the other cannot but has the ability to see life in a more intimate and simply deeper perspective. Carver makes it his goal to open people’s eyes to see that just because someone has the ability to look at the physical world that doesn’t mean that they can really see, meaning seeing past the outer shell of things and really coming to know and learn about everything on a deeper more intimate level. Life wouldn’t be as interesting if all humans only mastered the act of looking because that would be such a plain and boring way of looking at life and the many things that come with it. After

In the short story, “Cathedral” we are introduced to an unnamed male narrator, who acts as the protagonist of the story. The story unfolds through the narrator 's point of view as we are introduced to his wife and her blind friend, Robert. It is clear the moment the narrator is aware of Robert’s visit he becomes tense and uncomfortable, “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” (“Cathedral” 33). The narrator is unwelcoming and readers are quick to sense his dissatisfaction and

Within the text we notice the invading friendship between the unrevealed narrator’s (the husband) wife and the blind character Robert. Their relationship initiates the insecurities for the narrator, as it transpired though the course of ten years and many deep revealing conversations. Robert and his wife shared with each other countless important and confidential moments of their lives, but the narrator

Raymond Carver’s short story, “Cathedral”, depicts a story that someone-------?. It starts off with the narrator talking about his wife and a blind man who comes to visit them more so his wife. It’s the first time narrator would be meeting Robert the blind man. The narrator already has assumptions of what the blind are like, many proven wrong when they finally interaction. At the end, the narrator’s perspective is changed from their interaction.

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

Desperately longing for more, yet somehow not knowing it, the narrator (“Bub”) takes us through this story as his wife’s old blind companion, Robert, comes to visit. His wife having recently passed away, the narrator’s wife invites him to come visit for an undisclosed amount of time. Problematically, Bub does not fully understand blind people and seems to insinuate that they may not even have a purpose in life. However, as the story progresses, Bub begins to realize Robert can do many of the things he can do, with little more—if any—effort than Bub does them. Taking a look at each character, it is necessary to delve past the superficial and ask certain questions about Bub, his wife, and Robert in order to gain proper clarity and meaning of each person, and ultimately, the story.