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Comparing The Blind In Zz Packer And Raymond Carver's Cathedral

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People may tend to think they are compassionate and nonjudgmental when it comes to people's disabilities. However, everyone is judgmental in some way shape or form. Even people who don’t think are. Whether it’s a dirty look, mean comment, or fear of those with disabilities. What a majority of these able bodied people aren't aware of is their own personal invisible disabilities. Although neurotypical people perceive themselves as being fully capable, they are actually blind to their own impairment because they correlate themselves to disabled people. The short stories by ZZ Packer, J.D. Salinger, and Raymond Carver do an extraordinary job of expressing this problem in society. Even if people don’t experience a specific problem themselves, doesn’t mean that problem is nonexistent. ZZ Packer displays this in Brownies. This …show more content…

Raymond Carver projects this is his short story Cathedral. This story is about a husband, wife and a blind man named Robert. They two men become mutual friends through the wife. There is a bit of jealously throughout the story coming from the husband. He can not seem to figure out why his wife is so infatuated with Robert. Robert is blind for crying out loud, why would his wife like a blind man more than a fully capable man? It soon becomes obvious that the one blind is not Robert, but in fact the husband. Robert does the husband a favor and helps him see life in a more beautiful way through drawing. The husband states “My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything. “It’s really something.” (Carver 10). This proves how after the husband was blinded himself he truly saw something deeper and more meaningful than he had ever before. All from the help of the man who couldn’t even see himself. Even after getting help from others, able-bodied people are still unable to see through to their own

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930 Words | 4 Pages

The blind man whose name is Robert has also recently lost his wife. The narrator seems jealous of the relationship between Robert and his wife, he isn’t interested in speaking to him and only joins in their conversation out of a sense of jealousy. The narrator even thinks his wife has told the Robert everything about their relationship even though he can’t confirm it. When Robert initially comes to visit the narrator and his wife at their home he doesn’t have the most welcoming attitude but as the story progresses the narrator attitude towards Robert changes. The narrator alludes to “not knowing much about the blind besides what he saw in movies” (Carver in Gardner, Lawn, Ridl, & Schakel, 2013, p.302).

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652 Words | 3 Pages

Every so often a man experiences drastic changes in his body while being with his wife; his temperature rises, adrenaline increases, and his eyes dilate at the shock of what is happening. Indeed, this phenomena may mean several things some more pleasurable than others, but on occasion it is the actual state of anger and jealousy. In “Cathedral”, by Raymond Carver, the narrator is envious of the blind man, and is at the clemency of his emotions. However, as time passes the husband gradually overcomes his restless rage that blinds him, and becomes aware of the truth. This gradual transformation may be understood through the language and actions of the husband.

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1375 Words | 6 Pages

The unnamed narrator does not see Robert, the blind man, as a person, but as someone different. The grandmother, on the other hand, believes in her appearance and belief that is better than other people. After the challenges they both face, they end up finding enlightenment. In “Cathedral,” the narrator was not certain on how to describe the Cathedral to Robert. The narrator resorts to drawing and with a pen in his hand, he had realized that Robert “closed his hand over my hand” and asks the narrator to “close your eyes” as they drew the Cathedral (75-76).

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1330 Words | 6 Pages

In the short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the seemingly judgmental narrator is faced with meeting a blind man named Robert. The narrator sees himself as superior to others and, in this instance, especially to the blind. Due to the narrator’s pretentious attitude, tension between the blind and himself is revealed when he says, “[m]y idea of blindness came from the movies” (279). In Carver’s short story “Cathedral”, the tension between literal and metaphorical blindness is most evident through the narrator’s insensitivity and bitterness towards the blind man. The character of the narrator progresses from a closed minded individual to someone who can look outside of his own perspective.

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392 Words | 2 Pages

The Difference Between Looking And Seeing: What The Last Scene in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” Really Means In the last scene of “Cathedral,” Robert shows the narrator another way to look at the world by asking him to close his eyes and change his perspective, both erasing the narrator’s previous stigma against blind people and giving the narrator a renewed sense of understanding. The narrator has full use of his eyes but doesn’t truly see the goodness in his two companions in the story, by, for example, dismissing his wife’s poetry. Though Robert is blind, he has a different type of sight, a sight that lets him emotionally connect to the narrator’s wife.

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448 Words | 2 Pages

In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” written in 1983, the author points out that empathy and perspective are the only way to truly experience profound emotion. The narrator is struggling is sucked into his own comfort zone, he drowns his dissatisfaction on life, marriage, and job in alcohol. A man of limited awareness breaks through his limitations by socializing with a blind man. Despite Roberts physical limitations, he is the one who saved narrator from himself and helped him to find the ones vies of the world.

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566 Words | 3 Pages

The short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver depicts the judgement of a disable person. In the story the narrator judges his wife friend Robert for being blind. When the narrator found out that Robert was coming over he said, “My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed.

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910 Words | 4 Pages

“His being blind bothered me” (Carver 1). In Raymond Carver’s short story Cathedral, Carver establishes an ignorant narrator, who is dependent on alcohol and fixated upon physical appearance; he juxtaposes the narrator to a blind man who sees with his heart rather than his eyes. Through indirect characterization, Carver contrasts the narcissistic narrator to the intuitive blind man while utilizing sight as a symbol of emotional understanding. He establishes the difference between looking and seeing to prove that sight is more than physical.

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589 Words | 3 Pages

In Raymond Carver’s short story, “Cathedral,” Carver shows that people can change throughout time. Upon meeting the blind man, the narrator undergoes character development throughout the story, going from a very philistine, insensitive, blunt character to a polite, interested, perceptive man. Before the narrator met the blind man, he was a very impudent and narrow-minded person, but when he met the man it was as though a switch flipped, and he was opened to a different lifestyle. Our first interaction with the narrator is when he tells us about the blind man and we find out that he is coming to visit. The narrator tells us that he “wasn’t enthusiastic about [the blind man’s] visit,” which is okay in hindsight, however a little insensitive

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917 Words | 4 Pages

“Cathedral” is a short and warm story written by Raymond Carver. The author portrays the story in the first person narrative. Carver presents the interaction between an unnamed couple and a blind man by the name of Robert, who is visiting them. The story is told by the husband, the narrator, who is a prejudiced, jealous, and insecure man with very limited awareness of blindness. This theme is exposed through Carver’s description of the actions of the narrator whose lack of knowledge by stereotyping a blind man.

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490 Words | 2 Pages

Disabilities are made out to be this awful thing that has happened to someone, but it’s not. It’s a blessing in disguise because not only do you see, or in Robert’s case, experience the world in a different light, but you get to share your light among the rest of the people of the world. People with disabilities are even more disabled because of society, and the way they are looked down upon. As the reading goes on, it might be thought that the husband could even be jealous of the Robert because of the history his wife has with him, because early in the text, the narrator talks about how the blind man, Robert, “enjoyed her favors, and was her childhood sweetheart.”

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602 Words | 3 Pages

In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” he writes a story about a husband's journey to his epiphany. Robert, a blind man, teaches the husband how to see without his eyes. Often a person with the ability to see takes this for granted, leaving them only to see what is on the outside rather than seeing people, and things for what they really are. In this short story, Carver conveys the narrators epiphany through the symbol of the cathedral. Carver develops a story with symbolism throughout his story, beginning with the first line, “This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s

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552 Words | 3 Pages

Both parts of this clip would best be classified as using audiovisual humor as it uses a combination of visual and aural features. In the first part of the clip [proposal], there is an incongruous mismatch and irony that is concurrent, as we can see Joel with chocolates and flowers calling out to his girlfriend, but we also hear and later see that she is sleeping with someone else. The humor in both parts of the clip is self-contained, as you do not need to have knowledge of the other parts of the movie narrative to understand that he was going to propose, that his girlfriend is cheating on him, and that is he wandering the streets and at a bar because of this. The “you can say it again”/”tell me about it” joke is also self-contained as they do not require prior knowledge to understand. This joke is also

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865 Words | 4 Pages

In the world of literature, stories are often released for the purpose of social commentary or even to reflect on the authors past in a that its similar to an autobiography. Raymond Carver is a unique author often creating short stories that are of his own personal life through fictional characters that embody the turmoil he has gone through and social commentary on social issues. This is seen especially in his 1981 short story, Cathedral with a revised version being released in 1983, but we are gonna focus on the 1981 original. Cathedral’s plot centers around a blind man named Robert who after his wife dies, he lives with his departed wife’s friend who soon alongside her husband, helps teach Robert to learn a new way of seeing. The plot of the story while simple, is very complex under the surface, being a plot that is about three people who is dependent on each other and the connection that develops.

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528 Words | 3 Pages

In his contemporary short story, “Cathedral,” Raymond Carver tells the story of an unnamed narrator, his wife, and an old friend, a blind man named Robert. Robert has come to visit the narrator’s wife, who is quite excited to see this man whom she hasn’t seen in ten years, yet the same can’t be said of the narrator who is noticeably and vocally uncomfortable about his visit. The story is told through the narrator’s first person point of view, showcasing his thoughts and the events that take place when Robert comes to visit. Carver highlights the theme of having the ability to see, but not truly seeing, through his use of colloquial language, and creation of relatable characters. “Cathedral” begins with the narrator informing the audience

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