The Character of the Husband in Raymond Carver's Story Cathedral

His mom didn’t really want Robert at first and Vincent was very, very supportive about whether she wanted to bring Robert home or not. She said no until one night, when Mary and Vincent went home to their other children, Micheal, Gary, Paula, and Catherine and asked what they thought about bringing hime. All of Robert’s soon-to-be siblings said yes. While at first, Vincent and Mary were a little weirded out at first, their love for Robert grew stronger and stronger. Especially his mom’s, her love grew fast and fierce. His parents got over their “weird” feeling, they decided to take Robert out in the real world without getting

“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 husband failed to acknowledge the relationship between Robert and his wife poses a threat to his marriage. The husband is unable to see the level of intimacy that exists

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

Robert Lebrun: Robert is 26 year old man. It is said that he devotes himself to a different, usually married, woman

During her romance with Robert, Francesca reflects on her relationship with Richard during a bath, and her thoughts at this time strike the heart of the problems in her marriage. “Something as simple as a cold glass of beer at bath time felt so elegant. Why didn't she and Richard live this way? Part of it, she knew, was the inertia of protracted custom. All marriages…are susceptible to that. Custom brings predictability, and predictability carries its own comforts…And there was the farm… But there was something more going on here. Predictability is one thing, fear of change is something else. And Richard was afraid of change, any kind of change, in their marriage” (Waller 88-89). Francesca believe aspects of their marriage could use some change,

After he kept recalling many of the stories she told him, he raised a hatred emotions towards the blind man (Robert). Where his beloved wife were working with the blind man when she needed money to marry her first false love. She wrote a poem dedicated to a moment when she were leaving the job of Robert’s describing a request from Robert touching all around her face and neck even prior to the married of her 1st sweetheart husband. He described “Anyway, this man who’d first enjoyed her favors, the officer-to-be, he’d been her childhood sweetheart” (33). Time went by and Robert and she were increasingly strengthening their relationship. She shared most of her

When Robert arrives at the home, Bub is nervous about the conversation topics he wants to bring up. He is unsure what to talk about with the blind man because he perceives him as unequal from everyone else. Bub does not understand that he can talk to Robert just as he would his wife. Bub describes Robert in full detail almost as if he were expecting "blind people" to be wearing special clothing. He makes special reference to

Love has always been complicated. Whether you were married in 1700 or 2012, there are many things we'll just never understand. But what if you were married in the late 1800's to the early 1900's? I believe Mrs. Louise Mallard and Jeanne can both agree that it was not easy. The short story “The Story of An Hour” and the drama “I'm Going” will show that being a wife in that era was not all about passion and perfect families, but about control and dominance. Although the stories were written during two different time periods, the modern period and the Victorian period, there were still many similarities in both relationships. Each story centered itself around a woman

The blind man is coming for a visit and the narrator clearly does not want him over. The narrator states, “ 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 they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (Carver 106). This statement clearly proves that the narrator is judging Robert solely on the fact that he is blind. The narrator may also be jealous of Robert’s relationship with the narrator’s wife. The narrator does not have a good relationship with his wife, and that is why she spends so much time talking with Robert. On her last day working with the blind man the narrator’s wife let him touch her face. The narrator states, “She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose—even her neck! She never forgot” (Carver 106). The narrator is jealous of this and the fact that he cannot connect with his wife, but the reason why he cannot connect is because he only

he wanted to remember. Time passed, and eventually caught up to Robert as he passed away on

However, the husband’s skepticism and premature judgement of Robert is the entire lesson of the story. After not fully welcoming Robert into his

The wife and Robert have a long conversation. The narrator observes the two and is confused (and even turned off) by Robert’s nature. The narrator ends their conversation by turning on the television. This upsets the narrator’s wife and she leaves the room. Robert and the narrator smoke marijuana and watch television.

Right in the beginning of the story Robert Cohn, one of the main characters “friends” is introduced to the readers. When he was introduced he was with a woman who would continue to show up in the story for some time. However, Robert did not actually love this woman and it fully showed. He did whatever she said, many would believe this to be a sign of love in this time period, but, in fact he just did not know what else to do. As said in the story within the first chapter,

Surprising as it might seem to pedants, Robert was right when he said he held women in high esteem. In fact, so high was the esteem he held them in that he had decided years ago to remove himself from circulation. He wasn’t up to standard; he would have only been a disappointment, as had been proven over and over again. No woman stayed with him for long once they found out what he was really like. Too meek, too mild, perhaps?