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Examples Of Stereotypes In I In The Cathedral

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Stereotyping disables people
Nobody should assume how is the life of disabled people without knowing what they have been through nor should people believe on what they see. “When people rely on surface appearances and false racial stereotypes, rather than in-depth knowledge of others at the level of the heart, mind and spirit, their ability to access and understand people accurately are compromised” (James A. Forbes). According to the Longman dictionary, a stereotype is a belief or idea of what a particular type of person is like. The majority of human beings like to judge and assume when it comes to people with disabilities. Societies base their judgments on people incapacities or because some people don’t know how to treat disabled people. But disabled people can surprise you. In this essay, I will describe some of the stereotypes about people with disabilities that Raymond Carver shows in the story Cathedral. …show more content…

The narrator turns the television on, and there is a documentary about a cathedral. The narrator explains what it looks like to Robert and Robert persuades the narrator to draw a cathedral together.
Carver presents a lot of stereotypes about people with disabilities that I will briefly discuss. The narrator believes that blind people walk slowly. As Robert was blind, the narrator assumed that Robert did not walk like other people because he did not know where he was walking. Also, the narrator states that blind people use dogs for assistance and that they don’t laugh. In addition, the narrator expresses indirectly that blind people don’t have beards and that they are

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“His being blind bothered me” is said by the husband early on. The husband also refers to Robert as “this blind man.” He never uses the name Robert nor does he give him any human characteristics. These actions show that the husband sees Robert not as a person but as a handicap person.

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