The Role Of The Husband In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

In Cathedral, the unnamed narrator, husband, defines the character of Robert as an anomaly in which he doesn’t comprehend. “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 1983). The media has been able to lead people like the narrator to develop negative opinions towards those with disabilities creating a type of phobia. After hearing stories about Robert, told by his wife, he could not imagine this blind man having a good life, one worth living. He assumes that Robert’s wife, Beulah, had lived a very pitiful life as well, not having her husband ever knowing what she looked like or what subtle nuances her facial expressions could only show through sight.

He is always focused on his wife, and even though it is not his ideal of a perfect marriage he does seem to love and admire his wife as if it was. He is capable of telling us a lot of details about his wife without ever calling her out or even trying to persuade us to dislike her. His love for her makes it possible for the narrator to get past his dislike of Robert, and allow him to stay in his house. Even after all the dislike he shares with us in the very beginning of the story. He comes into the kitchen to talk to his wife, and tries his best to be a nice guy about the topic of the blind guest which is a much different view from earlier. This persuades us to look at the narrator in his wife's perspective, even though we have knowledge that she doesn't about the narrators anxiety over Robert. Another large detail we have over the wife is that the narrator is jealous of Robert and is just using his blindness as a scapegoat. However, even though this extreme case of jealousy is unhealthy for their relationship, the narrator, in his own way, tells his wife he loves her. When his wife tells him "If you love me... you can do this for me. If you don't love me, okay." he does exactly that and tries to make Robert comfortable (Carver 107).

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

Not only did the narrator feel insecure, he also feels that Robert’s arrival into their home is an invasion of his privacy. Critic Richard Eder said, "In ‘Cathedral’ a husband who has long resented his wife’s devotion to a blind man grudgingly puts up with the blind man’s visit" (103). The husband resents the thought of the blind man sleeping in his house (Carver 1054). Studies in social psychology show that people can react strongly to trespassers on their personal space. The narrator’s home encloses that personal space and thus he feels that Robert is intruding his privacy. Furthermore, the narrator is plagued with preconceived notions about blind people. For example, he thinks blind people do not smoke, should have dark glasses, and carry a cane (1056). Therefore, to have another man—blind at that—who is close to his wife and sleeps in his house is just too much for him to bear.

Being different from other people is difficult to deal with in life, yet, we judge people who are different from us. Robert, a blind man, from a short story called, “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver is a wonderful book and a life lesson story. Robert is a blind man who had a strong friendship with Bub’s wife. Bub is the husband and isn’t really that type of person anyone would get along with.Throughout the story bub wasn’t very fond of Robert because he would get jealous that his wife would be more interested towards Robert. Robert and bub’s wife were best friends before bub married her. Roberts personality was interesting and a person who you would want to know in life. Throughout the end of the story, Carver, the author, sends a heartwarming message to the audience that can change your view in things in life. In the story, Robert was very easy going, shady and creative.

The beginning of the story presents the narrator’s wife working for a blind man one summer by reading, “stuff to him, case studies, reports, that sort of thing” (Carver, 34). She eventually extends an invitation for the blind man, Robert, to stay at their house after Robert’s wife had passed away. The narrator was not too happy about having a stranger stay in his home by stating, “I wasn’t enthusiastic 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” (Carver, 34). The narrator seems very timid about someone he had never met stay at his house who can see purely nothing. This gives off an impression that the narrator doesn’t want to have Robert stay with him because he will be a hassle to keep up with since blind people in the “movies” progress, “slowly and never

Because of this the husband was completely ignorant about blind people and could only rely on his preconceived notions about the blind to interact with Robert. The husband thought all blind people always wore dark glasses and used a cane or guide-dog. He didn’t think blind men smoked because they couldn’t see the smoke. He even says “My idea of blindness came from the movies.” Those movies had portrayed blind people as slow, never laughing, and being guided by guide-dogs implying and enforcing the stereotype that the blind/disabled are helpless, weird, and/or inferior. Kemp says in a paper from 1981, the same year “Cathedral” was published, that there are three main ill-mannered views of the blind: non-acceptance, the blind are helpless and dependant, and the sighted must help the blind. These are all negative and are representative of the way the blind were viewed during the time of the story showing how the husband saw Robert as a blind man.

Immediately, the narrator reveals his narrow mindedness when faced with Robert, the blind man. Preconceived judgemental comments are mentioned moments after the initial meeting, as the narrator refuses to refer to the man by his name, instead only acknowledging him as “the blind man”. He recalls a moment when the blind man touched his wife’s face, not fully understanding the importance of such action, only classifying it as unusually strange. The narrator then reveals that he has “never met or personally known, anyone who was blind”, offering an insight into an explanation for his behaviour.

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

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.

In the short story Cathedral, a blind man named Robert is coming to stay the night at the narrator’s house. Ten years in the past, the narrator’s wife used to work for Robert. Therefore, the narrator’s wife and Robert have a good relationship and are very friendly toward each other. The wife doesn’t

In Raymond Carver's story “Cathedral” the main character happens to be the narrator, he lives with his wife, and is a genuine introvert, and self centered person. His wife has invited her best friend Robert, who happens to be blind, to come stay the night in their house while he is traveling to see his in-laws due to his wife's death. Being the type of person Robert is he wants to show “Bub” how being different is not a negative thing. It is time for the narrator to undergo a remarkable transformation. Just because someone has always lived so narrow-minded, narcissistic, and self-indulgent does not mean an extraordinary individual who has lived quite the opposite lifestyle, cannot possess the power to entirely modify their outlook on the world.

When Robert arrived, the husband realized that some of his expectations of Robert turned out to be false. Robert has shown himself to be a very outgoing and cheerful person and not the silent brooding ones that were displayed in the husband's moving going experience. The fact that he was surprised Robert smoked, based on his having read "somewhere that the blind didn't smoke because, as speculation had it, they couldn't see the smoke they exhaled," and the fact that the husband showed admiration towards how quickly Robert devoured his food shows the audience that the husband may have held the belief that physical blindness is akin to being inept and resulted in a limited capacity to interact with the world around him. Robert not only dispels misconceptions about his blindness, he also demonstrated himself

The narrator is told by his wife that she is having her blind friend come spend a night at their house. His wife had just passed and is a very good friend with the wife and wants the blind man to come stay with them. The narrator is not very happy about the blind man coming to visit and asks the wife where she met him and to talk more about. She explains that she worked for him, she read to him. When the blind man pulls up, the narrator is already being judgmental and prejudiced towards the blind man. He does not even the slightest open mind about meeting this man that his wife has such a good relationship with. In the story Cathedral, Raymond Carver uses metaphoric symbols, an object title, and a dialect style to get across the message