The Blind Man And Wife In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” is a story about a nameless man, who is the narrator, his wife, and his wife’s friend Robert. Robert is a blind man that his wife met many years ago while working in Seattle when she was married to her first husband. In the story “Cathedral”, the narrator doesn’t admit it but he is jealous of the men from his wife’s past, such as her ex-husband and Robert. The narrator is also narrow-minded towards the blind community and towards his wife’s feelings towards her friend’s visit. The narrator can see perfectly, but the absence of his own self-awareness and insight makes him blind in many ways, especially when it comes to his own life and his marriage.

Being blind manifest itself in a lot of ways. The most harmful type of this condition may be figurative blindness of one’s own situations and ignorance towards the feelings of others. Within Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral,” the narrator’s emotional and psychological blindness is at once obvious. The narrator faces many issues as well as the turn-around experienced at the culmination of the tale are the main ideas for the theme of this story; and these ideas aid the narrator in eventually develop the character transformation by simply regarding the literal blind man in a positive light.

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

Blindness is not limited to physical manifestation. In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” the figurative blindness is immediately apparent through the narrator and his shallowness, irrational jealousy, and egotistical personality. His dismissive behavior and ignorance towards the feelings of Robert, his wife’s blind friend, speak negatively of his character and reveals his insecurities. While the narrator’s emotional blindness and Robert’s physical blindness initially inhibits their bond, it eventually leads the narrator to an epiphany and the beginning of a character transformation. The different forms of blindness allow the characters to bond and grow over the course of the story.

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.

In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” the narrator is seen to show ignorance and bias towards blindness throughout the story, however towards the end he realizes his flaws and the difference between looking and seeing. From the beginning of the story to the end you can see a change within the narrator after his encounter with the blind man. At the end of Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” the narrator hopes to accomplish a change in his understanding of himself, and his experience with Robert flickers this change towards the end of the story.

In almost every story there is a meaning, whether that meaning is obvious or not is up to the readers’ interpretations. In some stories, that meaning hides behind a character, how that person acts, thinks, or express themselves and how they change throughout resembling growth. In Raymond Carver’s “The Cathedral”, the unnamed husband narrators the tale of his wife’s old blind friend Robert coming to visit after not seeing each other for years. They had remained in contact through audiotapes, but the husband seems to not understand the significance of their relationship, showing distaste with the visit for the majority of the story, due to his uncomfortableness. In this story, the writer displays his tale and its morals; by using the narration of the husband; Carver shows that there comes to be more meaning behind this bitter man that meets the eye, which argues the fact that perhaps this unlikable narrator is truly the antihero.

Cathedral is a short story written by Raymond Carver in 1983, about a prejudiced man who meets a disabled man. Through “Cathedral,” it becomes clear that the visit of the blind man Robert in the narrator’s house may change the narrator from stereotyping to accepting disabled people; this illustrates Carver’s theme which displays human insensitivity through the narrator’s reluctance because of fear, then acceptance, and finally understanding of Robert.

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” depicts a husband and a wife as they prepare and entertain a friend of the wife. The husband, the narrator, is not excited about the friend coming because he is blind. The blind man and the wife have been friends for longer than the husband has known the wife creating a complex and slightly jealous dynamic between the three characters. For the

Carver’s story “Cathedral” opens with this blind man, coming to visit the narrator’s wife friend of ten years. It takes place in the narrator's home; he is on his way to spend the night. However,

The two man shake hands, and the narrator’s wife leads the blind man to the sofa. The narrator is impressed with how little like a stereotypical blind man his wife’s friend looks like. They drink several rounds and talk mostly about the blind man’s trip, the narrator is surprised to see him smoking, since he thought blind people did not smoke. After a while they sit to eat, they eat in silence as the narrator admires the blind man’s proficiency with the utensils. After dinner they return to the living room for more drinks and small talk however, the narrator mostly listens to the two old friends catching up.

I would read Cathedral by Raymond Carver again because it teaches me a lot of lessons that could be used towards my daily life, our daily life in many different perspective mainly from the narrator of the book have full use of all his senses unlike the blind man Robert, who is the wife’s old employee and close friend that is coming to visit and the narrator is not happy about it at all. The narrator said that “He is no one I knew” and his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies in the movies the blinds moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were lead by helper dogs. A blind man in my house is not something I look forward to.”

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.