The Blind Man Exposed In Raymond Carver's The Cathedral

The story “The Cathedral” was written by Raymond Carver in 1984. Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon on May 25, 1932 and died on August 2, 1988. He was known for writing short stories and poetry. During the 1980s Carver contributed to the revitalization of the American short story. Early on he found a passion in his writing. Once he moved to California he decided to pick up other writing classes they offered at the university he attended. Carver studied under Richard Cortez Day at Humboldt State College in Arcata, California. Although his writing was so important to him he was not always the best student. He started out as B- average student. He was then accepted into a $1,000 fellowship in Iowa for his writing. He became homesick and went home. In this short story, Carver is showing how stereotyping a relevant thing both today and when this story was written. In this short story the narrator was uncomfortable with the idea of another man coming to stay in his home not to mention a blind man. At the beginning of

“Did you have a good train ride? Which side of the train did you sit on, by the way?” he asked Robert (Carver, 142). His wife quickly said, “What a question, what side!” (Carver, 142). The narrator asked this question without taking into consideration for Robert’s disability. He was trying to do what his wife asked of him. Robert went on to answer the question with no problem. Robert has been blind for some time so he knows and understands what people might say or how they might react to him and his disability. After this the narrator began to watch tv and allow his wife and Robert to catch up. As they were talking, the narrator was waiting something. The narrator thought, “I waited in vain to hear my name on my wife’s sweet lip: ‘And then my dear husband came into my life.’”(Carver, 145). But, he never once heard her mention his name in their