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Stereotypes In Flannery O Connor's Cathedral

564 Words3 Pages

"Cathedral" a story about a man who is annoyed with his wife's old friend that is blind, but ends up teaching him a new way of viewing life.

“Walk a mile in my shoes, see what I see, hear what I hear, feel what I feel, THEN maybe you'll understand why I do what I do, 'till then don’t judge me.” The advice to “walk a mile in someone else's shoes” means before judging someone, you must understand their challenges are in life and what they go though. This is clearly expressed in the story “Cathedral” by the narrator himself.
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. 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.” This is a common stereotype that the narrator uses in the story leading his character down a path of misunderstanding. …show more content…

As if he is telling us what is happening. It's conspiratorial because he's telling us how he really feels, but without getting emotional about. When Robert arrives, things start to get uncomfortable for the trio. The narrator isn't sure what to say or how to act around Robert. His wife fears that the narrator will say something stupid like a blind joke or something. The complication here is that three people are hoping to get along and have a good evening. Because of their history with each and other the position they are in feels a little

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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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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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The blind man, Robert, held a sense of power and control over the narrator even though the narrator was cruel to him for most of the story. In the end, however, the blind man gave the narrator an example of what it was like to be blind, and the narrator's mind opened and he gained a new understanding of Robert. This revelation also happened at the end of the

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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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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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