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The Blind Man In Flannery O Connor's Cathedral

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In the story of "Cathedral" the narrator is not happy that the blind man is visiting his home and has listened to rumors and unofficial sources to form a conclusion about the blind man before he even meets him. He feels both sorry for the blind man because of the fact that he is blind and feels like the blind man is limited to learning and truly experiencing life as a whole. He learns afterwards that him and the man get along quite well and even become friends because he was not like what he expected a blind person to be at all. This theory of having heard one story and believing it is true has plagued many of our minds and I think we should be more open minded when we form opinions on something or someone . Throughout this paper I would like
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"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.

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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

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Readers can understand the elements by reading what the narrator has to say about the blind man. He is always complaining about him before the blind man even gets to his house. The narrator in the beginning did not give the blind man a chance before he started judging him. In a world full of negative things, people should give each other a chance to get to know one

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978 Words | 4 Pages

Cathedral how blindness is used as a metaphor. “Cathedral” is a passionate story by Raymond Carver about a blind man who is trying to find company after his wife passed away. Overall, the story is a funny situation, in which the blind man leads the narrator outside of his comfort zone. One of the biggest metaphors during the story is the blind man, or the blind leading the blind. At the end of the story, both men collaborate on a drawling of a cathedral.

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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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From that moment, the narrator show his true side to me. It shows that he doesn’t not care about his wife feeling toward the blind man. After carefully reading “cathedral”, the narrator is jealous of the blind man relationship with his

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1112 Words | 5 Pages

Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”, is a short story told in the first person about a man meeting his wife’s blind friend. Aside from a few spare moments in which the narrator discusses what he knows of the pasts of his wife and her friend, Robert, this short story focuses mostly on the events of their meeting. In the grand scheme of things, this meeting between three regular people on some random day is ultimately unimportant, but to the people in question, especially the narrator, this meeting is incredibly significant. In the way his character develops over the course of as few as ten mundane pages, this story shows how ignorance isolates, and that making an effort to shed that ignorance can create meaningful connections with others.

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“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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The narrator had a hard time getting along with people and even so a blind person. When the blind man comes to their house, the narrator starts building a connection with him when the wife falls asleep. The connection started with cathedrals. The blind man had no idea

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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.

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In the beginning of the story, he is openly against the blind man, but as the story progresses, his attitude appears to change after he consumes the intoxicants. The narrator in “Cathedral” is biased against

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In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the narrator struggles with an internal conflict that involves him never being able to be in a vulnerable or sensitive state, especially when he is with his wife. The narrator creates suspense by having the reader wait until the end to realize what the blind man was referring to when he states, “From all you’ve said about him, I can only conclude—” (Carver 35). The reader can observe that the blind man was explaining that the husband was missing out on all aspects of life and the little things the world has to offer. The husband was so closed-minded, that he was missing out on having a deeper connection with his wife.

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Raymond Carver is said to be one the most influential American writers and poets in the 20th century, especially in his works of short stories. One of his most famous pieces is “Cathedral.” This well-known short story is the final piece in Carver’s collection Cathedral published in 1983. Carver includes much symbolism through the story’s plot, structure, point of view, tone, and character build. The depictions of each character’s experiences, the irony in the story, and hearing the narrator’s point of view in “Cathedral” work in harmony to support its themes that prejudice and ignorance as well as the nature of reality are present and change throughout the course of the story, and all lead to a strong character development by the close.

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1523 Words | 7 Pages

Naturally, those who communicate differently or are different from other people in general are prone to stereotypes and widespread discrimination. Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” is a critique of and a unique story regarding the untruth of many of those stereotypes surrounding the visually impaired. Acceptance of people different from ourselves because of spoken language or disability is pertinent to understanding their lives and the world we live in, and through my personal experiences, I now understand that to the fullest extent. The theme of tolerance within the context of language and communication barriers rings loudly in Robert and the narrator’s encounter in “Cathedral”, my personal relationship to my late aunt, and my experience being the son of an immigrant, all of them teaching that those that are blind, or

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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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