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Raymond carver's “cathedral” essay about blindness
Raymond carver's “cathedral” essay about blindness
Raymond carver's “cathedral” essay about blindness
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When first reading the story the narrator comes across as someone with a not so pleasant attitude. The narrator's wife and an old friend or hers named Robert; who is blind, have been communicating with each other for the past ten years. It's pretty obvious that the narrator is jealous of Robert. This is part of why the narrator has issues with blind people. “My idea of blindness came from the movies.
Each thought is rapidly flowing through his mind, and he cannot stop thinking about his wife being with the blind man, Robert. The language of the narrator depicts the emotion that he has frequently attempted to conceal from his wife. Furthermore, the excessive use of the word “she” demonstrates how the husband is upset over his wife’s action, not the blind man’s. The husband is not upset when Robert is with his wife, but he is enraged over the thought of his wife voluntarily hanging out with Robert. “She worked with this blind man all summer.”
In both short stories, “Cathedral” written by Raymond Carver and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” written by Flannery O’Connor, we encounter characters that have a limited perspective on life. We find that the unnamed narrator in “Cathedral” has a bias mindset towards the blind man, Robert before he even meets and gets to know him. While in “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the grandmother is ignorant of her surroundings while being oblivious to her own flaws. Both stories demonstrate the overcoming of blindness through prejudice and vanity to end up seeing something greater than themselves through the use of characterization, symbolism, and epiphanies. In “Cathedral,” the narrator’s wife invites her blind friend, Robert, to stay in their home
In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, it is a story about an interaction between the author, the author’s wife, and the wife’s blind friend, Robert. The blind friend was staying the night at the author’s house and he did not like the idea of it, but since it was his wife’s friend he dealt with it. The author gave characteristics to the blind guy and himself. The author assumed that blind people can’t do anything like a normal person does. The author said that “Did you have a good train ride?’
Sight is a gift that people are given that an abundance of people takes for granted in countless ways. In the story “Cathedral”, written by Raymond Carver, readers are introduced to a modern story on people realizing the truth behind the art of not seeing. He uses intense and lyrical descriptions on both sides of being blind and seeing through someone who cannot physically see. An abundance of people has found themselves under the ridicule of judging, and finding this unfortunate defect within someone’s unique genetic makeup to be a burden or even a curse from God. Within this story the main character learns to see without actually seeing with the help of his new-found friend Robert who teaches him new ways of looking upon his own life.
The narrator’s eyes are closed and he is being led by a blind man, yet he is able to see. Carver never explains what it is the narrator sees, but there is the sense that he has found a connection and is no longer detached or isolated. The narrator is faced with a stark realization and glimmer of hope. Hope for new views, new life and probably even new identity. Even the narrator’s wife is surprised by the fact that her husband and Robert really get along together.
“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.
In the story, the narrator’s narrow mindset is challenged over and over again as Robert breaks most stereotypes that the narrator held. As these stereotypes are broken, the narrator begins to feel more comfortable with Robert, and sincerely tells him that he is “glad for the company”. This release from prejudice culminates in the cathedral drawing scene of the story, where the narrator finally lets go of his bias towards blind people. Once the narrator closes his eyes, he is seemingly equal to Robert, and he consequently begins to understand Robert’s perspective. His newfound empathy towards Robert demonstrates how he has lost his prejudice towards him.
Throughout the story the reader can affirm that the wife has a deep, strong relationship with the blind man. The wife and the blind man share an intimate and vulnerable moments together; one includes when she lets him touch her face so he can remember her. Similarly, the narrator gets to share an intimate moment with Robert that leads to an epiphany. The epiphany that the narrator experiences when drawing a cathedral refers to seeing life from Robert, the blind man’s, point of view and seeing the struggles as well as life experiences a blind man must encounter on a daily basis.
They both exchange their life events with each other through mailing tapes. The narrator was not excited about Robert’s visit to his house in order to see the narrator’s wife.. Later, as he observed Robert closely, he felt that Robert is not like the blind man he assumed he would be. He realized that the blind are similar to people with
The narrator begins to change as Robert taught him to see beyond the surface of looking. The narrator feels enlightened and opens up to a new world of vision and imagination. This brief experience has a long lasting effect on the narrator. Being able to shut out everything around us allows an individual the ability to become focused on their relationships, intrapersonal well-being, and
Robert’s wife has recently died and he used to work for the narrator’s wife. Robert comes to visit the narrator’s home and the narrator is not happy about this because he believes blind people to be miserable and gloomy based solely on what he has absorbed from the movies. At the end of the first paragraph, he says, “A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (1.1). Little to the narrator’s knowledge, his wife and Robert had been using audio tape to correspond over ten years, and have much past history with each other. The narrator’s wife makes sure he knows to make Robert comfortable, and if he doesn’t it shows that he does not love her.
2) and she reads to him and they become good friends. The narrator throughout the story makes it apparent that he does not know his wife on a deeper level like Robert. For instance, when his wife tries to talk to the him, it is apparent that he does not look to converse on a deeper level yet, just go through the motions of his daily life; for example, “Right then my wife filled me in with more detail than I cared to know” (par. 14). Even though Robert cannot physically see the narrator’s wife, he is able to understand her a lot more as he listens to her through the tapes they mail back and forth between each other and have seemingly great in-depth conversations. The narrator makes it apparent that he is envious of their relationship as he reminisced about her poem.
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
Robert literally can’t see, but he does obtain vision only on a deeper level. The narrator isn’t too enamored with the idea of another man coming to his home. He is insensitive and makes some harsh comments that make Robert feel a little uncomfortable. Due to his callous and unsympathetic personality, the narrator is never able to connect with his wife while Robert is instantly able to. Robert comes to visit the narrator and his wife at their home for the first time.
