Category: Cathedral

50 Cent said: “Now would you leave me if you found out I wasn’t thuggin? Do you believe me when I tell you, you the one I’ loving? Are you mad ‘cause I’m asking you 21 questions? Are you my soul mate?”. 50 Cent is asking his girlfriend if she would love him no matter how much money he has, what he looks like, or what kind of person he is. Would these things really matter to her or would they be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Raymond Carver shares a similar concept in his short story ‘Cathedral’. Communication is an important factor in a strong, long-lasting relationship. After many years of marriage, the Narrator and his wife are faced with the harsh reality that they are not truly happy in their marriage, which puts their relationship in conflict with one another.

Marriage isn’t easy, and when a husband and wife do not agree, there can be lots of tension. Communication is the key to understanding and fixing the problems in a marriage, and fighting instead of talking things out can hurt the relationship. “‘…if you had a friend, any friend, and the friend came to visit, I’d make him feel comfortable…’. ‘You don’t have any friends’, she said. ‘Period’” (Carver, 34). The constant fighting and bickering are driving a wedge between the narrator and his wife. Not talking about how they feel and what is going on with each other is leaving room open for someone to swoop in and fill that void. “In time, she put all it all on a tape and sent the tape to the blind man. Over the years, she put all kinds of stuff on tapes and sent them off lickety-split”. The Narrator develops a prejudice for Robert and pokes fun at his disability to distract himself of his real feelings for what is going on in his marriage. He cannot understand that in light of everything else that has happened in their marriage, his wife is confiding in someone else. “She told him everything, or so it seemed to me”. The narrator is feeling insecure and wishes his wife would confine in him the way she does with Robert. A person’s demeanor towards someone else is important when in a relationship because it can set the whole tone of the situation. Her constant need to talk to Robert year after year on these tapes is pushing the narrator to feel insecure with himself and their relationship. What she does not see is that confining is someone who is not her husband is causing them to fight and is possibly the reason for their falling out.

In Tobias Wolf’s ‘Say Yes’, Ann and her husband share a similar disconnects in their marriage. After thirty years of marriage, Anne is faced with the question: ‘Does he still love me?’. “The whole question is ridiculous. If you had been black, we probably wouldn’t even have met” (Wolf, 874). Ann’s husband is reflecting on the fact that propinquity plays a role in who we marry or fall in love with; therefore, if Ann were black, they would have lived in different neighborhoods and attended different schools. In his mind there is no scenario where they could possibly fall in love since their paths probably would have never crossed. Ann’s husband is convinced, and quite confident, that he knows her very well. What he doesn’t realize is that his wife of 30 years is not the woman he claims to know. “He glanced over at her. She was watching him and her eyes were bright. ‘Look’, he said taking a reasonable tone, ‘this is stupid. If you were black, you wouldn’t be you’” (874). A person’s tone is important when trying to convince or reason with them about something that they are disagreeing about. Ann’s husband does not see the disconnection in his relationship with his wife and doesn’t see what she is really asking of him. The only thing Ann’s husband can see is the color of her skin and how it makes a difference about the person she is inside. Her being black would make it impossible for her to be the woman he fell in love with. “‘A person from their culture and a person from our culture could never really know each other’. ‘Like you know me?’, his wife asked. ‘Yes. Like I know you’” (873). Positive about the way he feels about Ann, he is able to say this without hesitation. His confidence fogs his ability to see what Ann is really asking him.

Ultimately, both the narrator and Ann’s husband come to the realization that they were wrong about the way they things were handled. For Ann’s husband, what started out as an innocent question became an avalanche of bad feelings and conflict between the two of them. “He felt, ashamed that he had let his wife get him into a fight. In another thirty years or so they would both be dead. What would all that stuff matter then. He thought of the years they had spent together, and how close they were, and how well they knew each other, and his throat tightened so that he could hardly breathe” (875). Ann’s husband is coming to the realization that he was wrong in saying what he did. He realizes that he just told his wife that it does not matter who she is, or that he loves her, if the color of her skin is not white. He then begins to see that he has hurt his wife with his strong and careless words. When people are passionate about their feelings, they sometimes get caught up in the fight, rather than thinking about the ultimate goal. “My wife said, ‘What’s going on? Robert, what are you doing? What’s going on?’. ‘It’s all right’, he said to her” (Carver, 42). The Narrators wife in ‘Cathedral’ cannot understand how her husband and Robert are getting along. She is so caught up in keeping her husband from Robert because of his negativity that she is failing to see the benefits in the two of them getting along. With the two of them getting along, it leaves room for her husband’s insecurities to diminish and allow him to see who Robert really is. “‘Take a look. What do you think?’…But I had my eyes closed. I thought I’d keep them that way for a little longer….’Well?’, he said. ‘Are you looking?’…My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But it didn’t feel like I was inside anything. ‘It’s really something’, I said” (42). The narrator has discovered what it feels like to be blind. Everything negative that was said about Robert and people who are blind was proven to be the furthest thing from the truth. Drawing the cathedral gave the narrator a chance to really get to know him as a person and not his title. He was able to see and feel things from Robert’s perspective and come to the realization that he was wrong. Even though the narrator’s opinion of Robert has changed, there is still the matter of making sure that with his new found feelings towards how he sees things, that he will talk to his wife about his insecurities in their marriage.

Although both couples may regret having said and done the things, they did due to their difference of opinions, it was a key element in improving their relationship. Both husbands are forced to reflect on themselves and their feelings for their wives. Communication has proven a key element in both of these stories and shows that in order to make a long-lasting loving relationship work both partners cannot be afraid to say what they think or feel, but to always consider the others feelings.

Works Cited

1. Carver, Raymond. “Cathedral”. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Kelley J. Mays. Shorter 11th ed. New York:New York, 2013.32-42. Print.
2. Wolf, Tobias, “Say Yes”. The Story and Its Writer. Ed. Ann Charters. Compact 8th ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 873-876. Print.

The short story ‘Cathedral’ has many different themes. These include, but aren’t limited to, jealousy, insecurity, isolation, detachment and connection. Raymond Carver’s short story ‘Cathedral’ is about prejudice and the ignorance that comes with it. The narrator’s false assumptions based off stereotypes and lack of knowledge eventually is overcome by treating others with equality and seeing things from their perspective.

The main character’s narrow-mindedness is already apparent in the first few sentences when saying, “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit… a blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to”, giving the reason, in which he states that his picture of the blind “came from movies … the blind moved slowly and never laughed”. The narrator bases his opinion of Robert on his lack of knowledge and assumes he does not like him. In order to really see someone for who they are, one has to look past the stereotypes and judgments from others and get to know them on a personal level. One could compare this story to ‘Boys and Girls’ written by Alice Munro. They are similar in the way that both stories make assumptions about, the role of a girl and boy, and a blind person, as ‘Cathedral’ does.

Throughout the story, the narrator’s words are less direct and subtler, compared to what he thinks. The contrast between the narrator’s thoughts and what he says reveals his acknowledgement of his bigotry, and also his fear and obvious lack of understanding the blind man. The audience is allowed to see the reasoning behind the narrator’s outrageous statements, including when the narrator states, “I’d always thought dark glasses were a must for the blind. Fact was, I wished he had a pair”. The use of the first-person point of view opens a gateway into the narrator’s mind in which his prejudice and ignorance of people different from him is revealed and emphasized.

‘Cathedral’ also demonstrates that people can change. After the dinner, the tone is switched to empathy and awareness. The narrator becomes more playful and humorous. This is shown when the narrator states, “I watched with admiration as he used his knife and fork …. It didn’t seem to bother him to use his fingers once in a while, either”. The tone then again changes into more accepting. The narrator tries to explain cathedrals to the blind man, and he realizes that he is no better than the blind man. The blind man then proposes they work together to draw the cathedral. This leads to a moment of deeper connection. The narrator originally stated that, “Truth is, cathedrals don’t mean anything to me”. After connecting with the blind man by drawing a cathedral, he states, “It’s really something”. This shows how the main character changes at the end of the story. The blind man shows the narrator the difference between looking and seeing.

At the end, the dialogue between the blind man and the narrator is a big turning point. The narrator is asked about their drawing; however, he continues to keep his eyes closed. I believe he realized that he could see more than he ever could with his eyes open. This proves that ignorance and prejudice is caused by false assumptions based off stereotypes and lack of knowledge and can be overcome with treating the other with equality. I have personally learned this through an experience with having a close friend who was blind. We were in band together, and I initially believed she could never be a great marcher. However, after practicing with her and standing by her when learning her steps, she showed that she could be as good as anyone else in the band.

‘Cathedral’ is a short story written by Raymond Carver. The story develops an ironic situation in which a blind man gives a sighted man an eye-opening experience. The story beautifully depicts the process of an individual who transforms from this unknowledgeable, ignorant being, into a knowledgeable soul. When we read the story, we can see that the narrator, the sighted man, is more insensible to the eye light and powerless to perceive with his senses. His blindness is not physical, but social and emotional, to understand other people’s feelings and his inability to find the meaning of his life.

‘Cathedral’ is a story about a husband and wife who live in New York and are visited by the wife’s friend, a blind man named Robert, whose wife, Beulah, recently died. The husband is apprehensive about the visit since he has never interacted with a blind man before. The wife met the blind man ten years ago when she worked for him as a reader to the blind in Seattle. The narrator tells us that on the last day of her job there, the blind man touched her face and she wrote a poem about the experience. The narrator was never interested on her poetry, this is one of the things that make the wife feel away in her marriage with the narrator.

The wife picks up Robert at the train station, and when they arrive back home, the wife seems happy to welcome Robert into the house, while the husband is still nervous. Things are awkward between the husband and Robert, so they decide to drink. After some light conversation, they eat dinner, and the husband is impressed with how Robert can identify the food on his plate. After dinner, the wife and Robert have their conversation, on which the narrator does not know how to interact. This leads the husband to get jealous about their connection. After the wife falls asleep on the couch, the husband and Robert watch and listen to the television. The husband switches to a channel that is talking about cathedrals, and Robert asks the husband to describe it. The husband realizes that he cannot describe it, and so Robert asks him to draw it out. As the husband draws it out, Robert follows along with his hand. In the end, Robert grasps what a cathedral looks like, while the husband begins to view and feel life from a different perspective, never experienced before.

Carver, the author of this story, using the narrator’s character shows us that the appearance as it would seem is ambiguous, the narrator could see externally and the blind man was the one without sight. The narrator in the story says: “And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed” (Carver, lines 9-10). Here, early in the story, the narrator gives context for the visitor he and his wife are about to receive at his home. The narrator displays discomfort with the idea of the blind man’s visit on the basis of not knowing him. The impression that these lines give is that the narrator was the one blinded by his own ignorance. This first instance of his ignorance is passing judgment on Robert before even meeting him, despite knowing very little about him.

We see narrator’s blindness throughout the story, while him talking to us and his small conversations between him and his wife. We see him being very closed off and cynical, he thinks that the marriage between the blind man and his wife, Beulah, is somehow a joke. The narrator makes these off-color remarks about her name when he says: “Beulah! That’s a name for a colored woman. ‘Was his wife a Negro?’, I asked” (Carver, lines 89-90). The narrator seems to be aghast at the idea that Robert’s wife could have been black. On top of being prejudiced towards the blindness of Robert, he is also being racist. The author is giving us a space to create hate and to dislike the protagonist, which is the narrator, and create the idea that narrator’s eyes have only shallow sight. Observation movements require deeper cooperation. They require to add feelings to the vision and see beyond.

Further on the story the narrator is describing his impressions of what the life of Robert’s recently deceased wife, Beulah, must have been like. Like of his sense of how depressing it must be to be the wife of a blind man. He says: “A woman who could go on day after day and never receive the smallest compliment from her beloved. A woman whose husband could never read the expression on her face, be it misery or something better. Someone who could wear makeup or not—what difference to him? She could if she wanted, wear green eye-shadow around one eye, a straight pin in her nostril, yellow slacks, and purple shoes, no matter” (Carver, lines 113-118). In this part, the narrator betrays his own sense of what is important in a relationship between a husband and wife. That the narrator pities Robert’s wife because she could never experience being appreciated for her appearance. This part communicates more about the narrator, of course, than it does about Robert or Beulah. The narrator cannot be conceived that Robert or anyone else with disabilities might offer other forms of love, empathy, or connection than just appreciating how someone else looks.

The narrator of the story has a stereotypical opinion on blind people, while being blind to his own imperfections. The narrator is confident that he can see everything and effortlessly see ‘anything off the surface’, which unquestionably explains why he does not know his wife well. The narrator says: “I didn’t think much of the poem. Of course, I didn’t tell her that. Maybe I just don’t understand poetry. I admit it’s not the first thing I reach for when I pick up something to read” (Carver, lines 31-33). Poetry is essential to human life. It allows us to convey our thoughts and emotions through beautiful, sometimes horrible, words. We turn to poetry to express the inexpressible. As we see in the story the narrator’s wife writes poetry because it has become a therapeutic way to express her inner thoughts and feelings. This is one thing that perhaps saved her life. If the narrator would be more careful on showing her love and interest, perhaps their relationship would be healthier and the wife would not find someone else, in this case the blind man, to understand her. However, Robert has a deeper ability to ‘see more’ than the narrator. Although Robert did not see the physical view of the narrator’s wife, he understood about her life and emotional situation more deeply than the narrator because he could see deep feelings that ‘lie beneath the superficial view’. The narrator also tells Robert that he smokes dope and stays up as long as he could, and he and his wife hardly go to bed at the same time. His blindness to his wife’s feelings isolates him from her and seems to drive him to smoke substances in attempt to escape reality.

Reading the story towards the end, Carver, the author of the story, helps the narrator to go out of his darkness through the help of the blind man. When the narrator drew the cathedral with the blind man and closed his eyes, he realizes an ‘epiphany’, in which he observes a lot more than he could ever see with his eyes being opened. Although the narrator knows how a cathedral looks like, he was incompetent to define it to the blind man as he could not ‘see its deeper meaning’. As a consequence, the definition of the image acquired more ‘human elements’, freeing the narrator and permitting him to truly see for the first time. The narrator says: “But I had my eyes closed. I thought I’d keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do. ‘Well?’, he said. ‘Are you looking?’. 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’, I said” (Carver, lines 392-397). This part shows that for the narrator, this is a transformative experience and perhaps makes him feel a faith. He experiences physical blindness while keeping his eyes closed, but at the same time finds so much more to feel, so much more to see. He is looking in a different way, and he is discovering that it is possible to look, see and feel in this different way.

The main journey is that the protagonist, the narrator, steps towards experiencing true sight. He was blind to his wife, blind to faith, and blind and judgmental to other people, until Robert came along and showed him just how important and ultimate things were under the surface. People are only as blind as they want to be. Sometimes ignorance and lack of knowledge are the causes of one’s blindness. Sometimes the lack of trust on people, and sometimes a broken heart, does not let people open up and see the worth and the true meaning of their life and people around them. Maybe coming out from the dark tunnel of your soul can save someone’s life, and most importantly, you can save your own life as well.

Work Cited

1. Carver, Raymond. ‘Cathedral’. The Atlantic Monthly, (1981): pp.1-13. Print.

People are part of a society where therapy would be necessary for emotional stability. The impact that therapy has on peoples’ emotional progress can pay-off their future. In Raymond Carver’s short story ‘Cathedral’, he dives into the significance of personal therapy sessions on people like the Narrator who have a difficult time expressing their feelings. People want to express the way they feel towards people they care about; however, there are things that make it difficult in doing so. Within ‘Cathedral’, the Narrator is trying to show affection towards his wife, but he is not displaying his actions accurately. Since Robert came into the picture, he feels that she adores his manners. The outcome caused by his inexpressible behavior towards both shows that he needs emotional help and seeks improvement for his own well-being. Carver utilizes ‘Cathedral’ to show an individual’s stability affecting the society positively in terms of the person using his survival to help victims. Through his characterization of the Narrator, Raymond Carver shows that in order for an individual to reach the highest of self-satisfaction, it is going to rely on putting effort to make the change in one’s behavior.

Carver demonstrates that one of the Narrator’s struggles with alternating his actions for becoming satisfied with himself is due to his lacking affection for his spouse. As the Narrator was spending personal time with his wife, she reads her poems with true intimacy and he would not give love in return. Instead of lending compliments on her work, he says: “I remember I didn’t think much of the poem. Of course, I didn’t tell her that. Maybe I just don’t understand poetry…” (Carver, 123). The author is explaining how the Narrator is not showing his devotion to his spouse and it can be seen through silence as well. In spite of him ignoring the memory about her reading the poems she wrote, this poem was supposed to be the bond that would make their connection stronger, yet it weakens their bond. According to Carver, the wife is trying to connect to him and he is choosing to forget about their connection than finding a way to build up. In order for the couple that is struggling with intimacy to connect, there has to be something that creates the chain. Therapy for emotional situations usually finds the way for people to connect to make the relationship bold. While therapy does not need to include a psychologist, the person who would be leading the session should be both of the partners, the wife and Narrator. Since they both know each other well, they could both succeed with their attempts. As the future progresses, the outcome of the Narrator’s and his wife’s efforts would become stable. The Narrator’s attempts to alternating his actions can only progress if he puts his steps his foot on.

The major problem within making advancement in the behavior journey that Carver displays about the Narrator’s behavior towards his wife is that he is emotionally impaired. When the Narrator is discussing with his wife the subject of blindness, the wife brings up the man she worked for, Robert. Although Robert was a blind man, he had emotional love towards his wife unlike the Narrator. This moment shook the Narrator following his wife’s explanation that he came to a realization that he had to “imagine a woman who could go on day after day and never receive the smallest complement from her beloved. A woman whose husband could never read the expression on her face, be it misery or something better” (Carver, 125). Carver mentioned that the realization that the Narrator had was about the situation between himself and his wife, not about Robert and his wife. His own wife is the woman who “never receives the smallest complement” and the “husband could never read the expression on her face”. This in connection to Carver’s point in the statements is the saddening point in the story as for the Narrator, who is learning to figure out his own issue. Moreover, when he meets Robert, this could be his emotional therapy which could aid the progress in emotional affection. This is the therapy that affects people mostly when it is speaking to someone that went through the same issue, but alternatively. The survivor, Robert, can help the victim, Narrator, come out of misery, yet it needs to include effort between himself and his partner. While it will take time for the Narrator, his actions are developing anew through a long way.

Carver came to the conclusion that the Narrator succeeded in his journey with the help of Robert’s motivational talk to experience something he never had. As Robert spent personal time with the Narrator, they were watching a series discussing a cathedral. The documentary discussed the physicality of the building, but not the people’s connection to it. This documentary is similar to how the Narrator would interpret the way he loves his wife, but he is going a long way with the help from Robert. The moment that sparked the Narrator was when he was drawing a cathedral with Robert and he said: “Keep them that way. Don’t stop now. Draw” (Carver, 133). As stated by the author, these statements made by Robert to the Narrator ignited the light in his heart because he was focused into the drawing with Robert that he started to feel his deep emotions about the drawing. Although he is unable to explain the way he is feeling, he put himself in Robert’s shoes without realizing, since he was experiencing emotional affection through physical blindness. This experience made by the author for them has helped the Narrator meet a positive outcome to his life, including a balance between physical and emotional love. If there is not any harmony among people, then it is difficult to create the cooperation in the relationship. Despite his issue of affection, the Narrator came through a stumbling path to a smooth way in his conduct.

As indicated, Carver used the Narrator’s characterization to portray the direction to develop satisfaction by utilizing personal strength within shifting one’s behavior. If a person is striving to succeed in loving his or her partner, it will take personal effort to make it happen. It does not happen by assembling perfection, but it occurs through natural practices. Although love is not a simple feeling, it is a sensation that could be pleasurable that once it occurs, it spreads like an epidemic virus. As a matter of fact, the Narrator succeeded in his case without knowing the outcome between himself and his spouse. Since this situation displayed its cure from destruction, any part that is left out would mess the outcome in similar cases if this is not taken seriously. In order to build up from therapy, each behavioral adjustment is another brick placed over the relation.

Work Cited

1. Carver, Raymond. ‘Cathedral’. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction, by Ann Charters, 3rd ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003, pp. 123–133.

Is reality simply based on the things that can be seen with the physical eye? Are there things beyond the physical eye which leads us to a deeper perception of life? Can epiphanic moments be the key to this deeper level of perception where we are able to see things that require more than physical eyes? The inability to see beyond our physical eyes produces a limited perception of reality. However, the ability to see beyond the physical realm opens an avenue to experience deeper levels of reality. These defining moments are very important in our lives because they help us to break free and move beyond the norms of society. Through the use of symbols and irony, both Raymond Carver, author of ‘Cathedral’, and Alice Walker, author of ‘Everyday Use’, conclude their short stories in an epiphanic moment in order to demonstrate a deeper perception on blindness and spiritual awakening.

In these stories, both Carver and Walker utilize physical settings and social standards as affecting components in the characters independence and social development. According to Peterson, “By situating readers in a close, direct relationship with the narrator and forcing them to view the world from the narrator’s perspective, readers progress through a series of epiphanies, effectively conveying the stories central message” (Peterson, 167). In both stories, the readers were drawn close to the narrators. Sadeq writes, “Carver is known for his bleak and stark portrayal of working-class people trapped in states of isolation. Meanwhile, Walker grew up in an environment full of racism and poverty, which along with her passion for gender issues, remains a large part of her narratives” (Sadeq, 157). In ‘Cathedral’, Carver introduces the setting in a living room of a middle-class home somewhere in New York. This is home to the narrator and his wife, who was an old friend to a blind man. The story is set at the time, in the early stages of the switch from black and white to color televisions. A time when cassette tapes were on the leading edge of technology. In ‘Everyday Use’, Walker also uses settings and social standards to illustrate the main character’s values of independence and social improvement. Walker introduces the setting with a poverty-stricken family in the rural south. The main characters, Mama and her two daughters, Maggie and Dee, live in a small home with a tin roof and “no real windows, just some holes cut in the sides” (Walker, 365). Through this description of the home, readers gain an unmistakable picture of this family’s impoverished lifestyle. Mama, the narrator, makes reference to her lifestyle due to poverty. She describes herself as a big-boned, hard worker with “man working hands” (Walker, 363). The time is set during the ‘60s or early ‘70s’. A time when African Americans were faced with the task of striving to escape prejudice and poverty while searching for their personal identity in terms of culture. The expression ‘negro’ had been replaced with ‘black’. The new slogan to chant was ‘black power’. In a quest to discover their African roots, numerous blacks were prepared to dismiss anything that had to do with their American heritage, which was filled with generations of torment and injustice. Together, these stories, although taken from different backgrounds draw to a close in a significant epiphany for the characters involved as they travel on their journey to enlightenment.

Often, perceptions of reality are about the ways people communicate or fail to communicate due to their limited ability to rise above social norms. In ‘Cathedral’, Raymond Carver portrays the narrator, as someone without the ability to communicate with others. He looks at everything within his closed environment. His perception of Robert was limited to how he thought a blind man should look and act. According to Facknitz, “He is numb and isolated, a modern man for whom integration with the human race would be so difficult that it is futile. Consequently, he hides by failing to try, anesthetizes himself with booze, and explains away the world with sarcasm” (Facknitz, 294). In ‘Everyday Use’, Alice Walker portrays Dee as someone without the ability to communicate with others. Mama struggled to send her to a good school. However, the outcome of this struggle did not prove it to be the best decision. Dee’s education exposed her to a world far beyond that of her mother and sister. A world in which she now lost her ability to communicate effectively. A world which became the means by which she began to use her intelligence to intimidate and belittle people. The narrator recalls that Dee “washed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn’t necessarily need to know. Pressed us to her with the serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand” (Walker, 364). According to Nancy Tuten, “Walker stresses not only the importance of language but also the destructive effects of its misuse. Clearly, Dee privileges language over silence, as she demonstrates in her determination to be educated and in the importance, she places on her name. Rather than providing a medium for newfound awareness and for community, however, verbal skill equips Dee to oppress and manipulate others and to isolate herself” (Tuten, 125). No matter how language can be, misusing it can be destructive. Dee used her newfound verbal skills to manipulate and oppress others. Sometimes, with closed lips, we have to speak to the outspoken by doing things to put them in their place. It is not surprising that Mama, who often communicate through silence, gained enough courage in the end to snatch the quilts from Dee and give them to Maggie.

Sometimes, we limit ourselves by only seeing things the way we are taught to see them. We enclose ourselves in a space where we can only experience our perception of a thing. However, there is a space that goes beyond the space that we see with our physical eyes. That space is spiritual, it is unlimited. It is a space where we can share an identical perception of something with someone else. In ‘Cathedral’, the narrator has physical eyes to see. With his eyes, he looks at everything within his closed environment. Though he looks at things with his physical eyes, he is incapable of seeing beyond his physical eyes. He sees himself as being superior to the blind man. His perception was limited to his television knowledge of how a blind man should look and act. The blind man, on the other hand, had a keen ability to see. He could not look at things with his natural eyes. However, his sight was enlightened spiritually. He saw beyond the surface of things. His knowledge delved into the deeper things of life. The absence of physical eyes seemed to heighten his awareness of a deeper understanding of life. Ala Sadeq writes: “‘Cathedral’ offers a variant on the Sophoclean irony of seeing the truth only when literally blind. Before meeting Robert, the sighted narrator sees nothing of what is true about blind people. At the end, temporarily deprived of sight when he closes his eyes, the narrator comes close to seeing liberation from his claustrophobic existence” (Sadeq, 158). When the narrator was initially asked to describe the cathedral that he saw on TV, twice he confessed his inability to communicate what he saw, “I’m just no good at it” (Carver, 225), and “I can’t do anymore than I’ve done” (Carver, 225). But all of this changes when he faces an epiphanic moment as he puts himself in Roberts shoes and achieves something that he never thought possible. The blind man helped him to gain insight by leading him to an experience that opened his spiritual eyes. Robert instructed the narrator to close his eyes. Once they were closed, without looking, he instructed the narrator to draw. According to Mark Facknitz, “the blind man gives him a faculty of sight that he is not even aware that he lacks” (Facknitz, 293).

In ‘Everyday Use’, Dee’s education exposed her to a world far beyond that of her mother and sister. A world in which she too was without the ability to see. When she arrived at the family home, she had lost perception of whom she really was. Due to the fascination of her new world, she was blind to her roots. She was not able to see the significance of her name, so she changed it. She looked at precious artifacts along with quilts which were made with swatches of clothes that had been worn by her ancestors, but she could not see their significance. These quilts were true tokens of her identity. However, the educated one did not know much about her family history. She desired to hang the heirlooms in a museum like an exhibit, to be looked at. She did not understand their significance, therefore, she was incapable of respecting them. When Dee arrives on the scene, her visit is really an exercise in taking. As soon as she arrives, she takes pictures. Later, she takes food as she eats the meal that Mama prepared. After dinner, she takes the dasher and churn top, and after ‘rifling’ through the trunk, attempts to take the quilts. Although she has abandoned her American name, she still holds tight to some American customs and culture. As David Cowart explains: “She wants to make the lid of the butter churn into a centerpiece for her table. She wants to hang quilts on the wall. She wants, in short to do what white people do with the cunning and quaint implements and products of the past. Wangero fails to see the mote in her own eye when she reproaches her mother and sister for a failure to value their heritage – she, who wants only to preserve that heritage as negative index to her own sophistication” (Cowart, 175). Wangero limited herself by only seeing things the way she was taught to see them.

She enclosed herself in a space where she could only experience her perception of reality. However, the narrator in ‘Everyday Use’ was able to see beyond physical boundaries. Mama was able to see the generational history of oppression in her family. She was able to see beyond the appearance of the family quilts. She saw the family memories that had been intertwined throughout the quilts. She saw them as documents of living history. Each swatch was a constant reminder of the people who made and used them. She saw the true significance of the quilts. According to Cowart, “The quilts that Wangero covets link her generation to prior generations, and thus they represent the larger African American past. The quilts contain scraps of dresses worn by the grandmother and even the great grandmother, as well as a piece of the uniform worn by the great-grandfather who served in the Union Army in the War Between the States” (Cowart, 172). These precious heirlooms served as a living legacy of the family’s pride and struggle for many generations. This valuable inheritance was something that had been passed down from generation to generation. Without looking, she was able to see the blindness of her daughter. Nancy Tuten also noticed that “Mama’s awakening to one daughter’s superficiality and to the other’s deep-seated understanding of heritage” (Tuten, 125).

Reality is not simply based on the things that can be seen with the physical eye? There are things beyond the physical eye which leads us to a deeper perception of life. Epiphanic moments can lead to a deeper level of perception which gives us the ability to see things that require more than physical eyes. In the beginning of the story, the narrator in ‘Cathedral’ was portrayed as an ignorant man stuck in his own world of preconceived notions about blind people. He was satisfied with his world and never thought of stepping outside the box. However, when the blind man had him draw a cathedral, he experienced something that he never thought possible. He was so touched that he did not want to open his physical eyes. He chose rather, to keep his eyes closed and enjoy the experience. At that moment, he experienced an epiphanic moment, a spiritual awakening. “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, 45), he said, as he realized that there was indeed a world beyond the one he knew.

It is ironic that Dee, by looking, without the ability to see, concluded that Mama and Maggie did not understand their heritage. “‘You just don’t understand’, she said, as Maggie and I came to the car. ‘What don’t I understand?’. I wanted to know. ‘Your heritage’, she said” (Walker, 370). Clearly, it was Dee herself who did not understand her heritage. She was able to look at the artifacts, look at the family home, and take pictures with a blind perception of her heritage. As the educated one in the family, she thought that changing her name, appearance and mannerisms would show her commitment to her heritage. According to Farrell, “Dee announces that she is no longer Dee, but ‘Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo’. She has newly adopted an African name since, as she explains: ‘I couldn’t bear it any longer being named after the people who oppress me’” (Farrell, 183). In an attempt to rise above the shackles of oppression, she refused to be called by the name of the people who oppressed her. According to Cowart, “Wangero has realized the dream of the oppressed: she has escaped the ghetto. Why, then, is she accorded so little material or authorial respect? The reason lies in her progressive repudiation of the very heritage she claims to revere” (Cowart, 172). She could not see that her true heritage went far beyond being African. Her new name, her new African attire and her new male friend are all physical manifestations of her desire to promote her newly adopted African heritage. Perhaps she will eventually develop a keen perception of the world beyond that which she can see with her physical eyes. At that moment, just as the narrator in ‘Cathedral’, she too will be able to experience her long awaited epiphanic moment.

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision” – Helen Keller.

In ‘Cathedral’, a short story written by Raymond Carver, the narrator is presented with a situation, one that shows him that there is more to life than he could have imagined. Throughout the story, it is apparent that the differences between Robert (the blind man), his wife Beulah, the narrator, and his wife, make the narrator uneasy. However, by the end of the story the narrator sees a deeper meaning to life. Carver portrays the narrator as being prejudiced and having a narrow sense of the world. He does this by showing him exhibiting disdain for both Robert and Beulah for being different, as well as his wife’s relationship with Robert.

The narrator states within the first paragraph that his view of blind people comes from the movies. “In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs”. This statement shows the narrator believes the blind move slowly, are always unhappy, sometimes bring dogs wherever they go, and in general are helpless beings. He also states, “And his being blind bothered me/ A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to”. This quote from the story shows that the narrator has not put an abundance of thought into how the blind live, even though his wife is exceedingly close with Robert.

An irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics, is known as prejudice. The narrator shows disdain toward Beulah because her name indicates the color of her skin. “She’d told me a little about the blind man’s wife. Her name was Beulah. Beulah! That’s a name for a colored woman. ‘Was his wife a Negro?’, I asked. ‘Are you crazy?’, my wife said. ‘Have you just flipped or something?’. ‘What’s wrong with you?’, she said, ‘Are you drunk?’”. In this dialogue, the narrator is tremendously unambiguous to how he feels toward Beulah’s skin color, agitating his wife. At this point the narrator is less prejudiced about Robert being blind, and more so at Robert’s wife’s skin tone.

Throughout the story, the narrator mentions, in abundance, Robert’s relationship with his wife. The narrator has a jealous and insecure tone about their relationship. “She told me, he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose – even her neck! She never forgot it. She even tried to write a poem about it. When we first started going out together, she showed me the poem. In the poem, she recalled his fingers and the way they had moved around over her face. In the poem, she talked about what she had felt at the time, about what went through her mind when the blind man touched her nose and lips”. This situation is brought up multiple times as the story continues. The narrator is uneasy with the thought of his wife being touched by the blind man, even if it was before they had met. As the story continues, the narrator brings up the deep level of communication between his wife and Robert. “He asked her to send him a tape and tell him about her life. This went on for years”. The narrator mentions when his wife was with her ex-husband – the officer – and tried to commit suicide, but instead got sick. “She put it all on tape and sent the tape to the blind man. Over the years, she put all kinds of stuff on tapes and sent the tapes off lickety-split. She and I began going out, and of course she told her blind man about it. She told him everything, or so it seemed to me”. The narrator is unnerved by the blind man knowing about the aspects of his wife’s life, more than himself. Eventually, his wife asked if he wanted to listen to one of the tapes Robert had sent. She informed him that the tape was about him; this infuriated the narrator. “After a few minutes of harmless chit chat, I heard my own name in the mouth of this stranger, this blind man I didn’t even know!”. Robert knows everything about his wife. To the narrator, his wife confiding in another man, let alone a blind one, is a major issue.

Beulah, Robert’s wife, a Negro and the wife of a blind man. On page three, trailing onto page four, the narrator talks about how he pities Beulah for the life she must have led. “After they had been inseparable for eight years-my wife’s word, inseparable. They’d married. Lived and worked together, slept together, had sex, sure, and then the blind man had to bury her. All this without his having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked like. It was beyond my understanding. I felt sorry for the blind man. And then I found myself thinking what a pitiful life this woman must have led. Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one. I’m imagining now – her last thought maybe this: that he never even knew what she looked like, and she on her express to the grave. Pathetic”. The narrator feels that Robert and Beulah had a crappy marriage and life together because of what made them different, he is too narrow minded to see that there is more to a person than what you can physically see, let alone the world.

It took the blind to make a make a man truly see. Once Robert had finally arrived at the narrator’s house, things were awkward. Upon a few alcoholic drinks, full stomachs from dinner, and some ‘dope’, the narrator finally started to bond with Robert. Over the course of the evening, Robert impressed the narrator with his use of utensils, knowing the television was colored, and eventually having the narrator show him a cathedral. The narrator, with Robert’s hand over his, drew the cathedral on a shopping bag with a pen. Eventually, Robert told the narrator to close his eyes and continue drawing. “His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now. Then he said: ‘I think that’s it. I think you got it. Take a look. What do you think?’. But I had my eyes closed. I thought I’d keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do. ‘Well?’, he said. ‘Are you looking?’ 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’, I said”. With this realization, the narrator finally started to grasp that there is more to the world than what he originally thought.

At the beginning of this story, the narrator is extremely shallow minded and prejudiced, however, by the end he has a new outlook on life. He understands why Robert and his wife are close, and has a new understanding of people who are different from himself. In conclusion, it is important to see the world with and open mind, don’t shut people out just because they’re different. The world can be a beautiful place full of amazing things, you just have to be able to see it.

Works Cited

1. Aleman, Steven. ‘Blind Vision’. Disability Rights Texas, Steven Aleman, DRTx Attorney and Policy Specialist, 8 Oct. 2018, http://disabilityrightstx.org/2018/10/04/blind-vision/
2. Carver, Raymond. Cathedral. 1981.
3. ‘Prejudice’. Merriam-Webster, http://merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prejudice

More than often, people use stereotypes to describe or define other people without fully knowing the effects they may have. A stereotype is commonly known as a widely held fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. Many people are guilty of creating stereotypes about other groups and are not aware of it. This can lead to prematurely judging others without getting to know them. One of the only ways to lessen the behaviors of stereotyping others is by being exposed to different people and not judging based on what people see on TV or hear on different media platforms. In the story ‘Cathedral’ by Raymond Carver, the main character goes through a significant personal transformation. Carver’s opinions begin with being stereotypical about changing his outlook on life through Robert. Carver created a false narrative about Robert, and it showed the danger of only knowing one-sided story about a group of people. Carver’s story supports Adichie’s arguments that single stories create false narratives about minorities, pointing out that perspective is the only way to truly experience profound emotion through the use of amplified stereotypes and the narrator’s character development.

Adichie emphasizes that inherent in the power of single stories is dangerous, and the danger is only knowing one story about a group. Carver supports this through his interaction with his wife’s blind friend, Robert. In the beginning, the narrator is very dubious of Robert-a blind man- entering his home. He writes: “A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to”. He has no idea what to expect, leading the narrator to create a stereotypical mindset on blind people from movies. He immediately assumed that they “moved slowly and never laughed”. Clearly, he can’t see past Robert’s disability. He disregarded him the same way a racist white man would ignore a person of color. People who judge a person based on such character are only seeing the particular aspect of the person that makes them uncomfortable. They are not seeing the whole person. The narrator has placed Robert in a category that he labels abnormal, which stops him from seeing the blind man as an individual. This goes back to Adichie, saying that there is negative thinking when one tends to form stereotypes based on a single story, the one-sided argument. Adichie says that “these negative stories are to flatten my experience and overlook the many other stories that formed me”. It blindfolds one’s eyes and prevents them from seeing the complexity, diversity, and similarities that construct their world.

Adichie argues that the power in telling a story is dangerous because someone may only know one story of that specific group. Adichie says, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story”. Adichie’s argument goes back to the way the narrator treated Robert and made him seem like an outcast. These one-sided stories regularly create false narratives that will eventually lead to misjudgment. When being misjudged by another, it makes a person feel like they haven’t been able to introduce themselves because of a one-sided story. Adichie presented an example in her Ted Talk of when she moved to America to live with her American roommate. Adichie mainly focuses on personal stories to emphasize the pervasiveness of stereotypes; she describes times when a ‘single story’ was forced upon her. Adichie says, “I was 19. My American roommate was shocked by me”. Her roommate was shocked when she knew how to use essential utilities because she “assumed that I did not know how to use a stove”. Her roommate’s single-story was most probably created off of what she has seen on TV, similar to what the narrator assumed of Robert.

Adichie’s Ted Talk not only gives personal examples of the danger of single stories, but it supports Carver’s character development in the story. Carver writes, “But I had my eyes closed. I thought I’d keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do. […] My eyes were still closed. I was at my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything”. This particular scene in the story is the most significant because it proves that Adichie’s argument is valid. The narrator had to take the time to draw the cathedral. He had to think about it and see it in his mind’s eye. The narrator finds himself pulled in and adding details to make the picture complete and even drawing some of it with his eyes closed. The narrator recognizes that although his eyes were closed as if he was blind, he can tell how immensely and detailed cathedrals are. This drawing puts him in the same shoes as Robert; although he is blind, he still has sight, he has to visualize it in his mind just as Robert did. This scene is where the narrator realized the importance that comes along with looking past stereotypes and getting to know someone for who they are versus what they are supposed to be. The narrator put himself in a position that made him look at Roberts’ side of the story, that although Robert is blind and can’t see, he helped a man with perfect vision see what he sees. This opened up a whole new world for the narrator that made him look past the stereotypes, just as Adichie said people should.

‘Cathedral’ by Raymond Carver is a rather prolonged short story about a blind man. The blind was invited to spend some time with a long-time friend and her husband after he had experienced the loss of a loved one. The narrator of the story happens to be the wife’s husband who isn’t particularly friends the blind man named Robert. For some odd reason he isn’t named throughout the story. The narrator was blinded by prejudice, and lack of knowledge on blind people. He was literally blinded by his prejudice.

At the beginning of the story the narrator spoke in a very blunt manner. This helped set the scene on how the narrator would first be acting at the beginning of the story. The narrator was not very fond on having Robert stay with him and his wife for the reason being Robert is blind. He had a fixed mindset on how blind people act, or at least how he thought they were and acted.

At the beginning of the story the narrator’s thoughts were displayed to the readers for us to the readers to see his distinct thoughts on blind people. “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. 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” (Carver, 1). The narrator was pretty honest on telling us the reader on how he felt about Robert, and the situation he believed his wife was forcing onto him and herself. He had an exact outlook on what he expected of the blind man, and he would look and be like. This showed the lack of knowledge of the husband. He was trying to associate what he saw in movies with how he expected the blind man to be like. He made assumptions that blinded him from the reality: just because the man is blind doesn’t mean what he saw in movies should be what he should expect. He started to create this view on blind people that caused him to make himself.

Throughout the story the narrator barely addressed Robert by his name. He would keep calling him the blind man. This is also somewhat a form of discrimination. The author was trying to convey the message on how the narrator treated Robert differently by calling him the blind man, the narrator didn’t really seem to notice either. He acted as if the man had no name or just in general was pointing out the ‘negative’ aspects of the man or so he thought. The narrator the went on and said: “I remembered having read somewhere that the blind didn’t smoke because, as speculation had it, they couldn’t see the smoke they exhaled. I thought I knew that much and that much only about blind people. But this blind man smoked his cigarette down to the nubbin and then lit another one. This blind man filled his ashtray and my wife emptied it” (Carver, 6). At this point the narrator is getting to the point where his lack of knowledge is not just prejudice, but also extremely disrespectful. By him saying that he read it somewhere was supposed to be some kind of justification yet it only made it look worse on his part. Instead of going into meeting Robert with an open mind, and readiness to learn the author went in with the little knowledge he had insulting the Him in his head.

The author then went on to the end of the story, trying to help the narrator have a new view on blind people. Robert tried making the narrator describe to him what a cathedral looked like. Although the narrator had seen a cathedral many times, he was unable to describe it to Robert. This made the narrator understand a bit of what a blind person has to deal with.

Carver used the fact one of the main characters was an actual blind, helping a man fully aware and capable of seeing to really see his prejudice towards blind people. He used the blind man also known as Robert, to open his friend’s husband’s eyes, although he wasn’t medically blind, he was blind on what a blind man should be like. He made assumptions and created this mindset that he was unaware of, and also made him unaware of the possibilities. He had a fixed mindset of a sort.

“For they do not look through to the soul, nor have a keen eye for virtue, but they stop at the outward excellencies of the body and admire daring, and strength, speed in running, and size, and consider these as fit qualifications for the purple robe and diadem” (Goodreads). In this quote, Anna Coleman portrays how society views others and the fundamental views of the narrator in the short story “Cathedral.” In the story, the author Raymond Carver displays the superficial ideals of society through the narrator, the husband. A blind man, Robert, has to stay at the narrator’s house after his wife’s untimely passing due to cancer. The narrator’s inability to look past the outward appearances of characters within the story results in his dismissal of Robert due to his disability. The narrator gradually begins to see deeper into the blind man once they begin talking to each other and he finally pushes away his shallow views and realizes that there is more to a person than what is on the surface. The symbolism of alcohol, the cathedral, the tapes, and blindness all play a strong part in the overall lesson of the story.

Throughout the story, the husband’s shallow views of people strongly reflect the superficial views of society nowadays. Society often looks down on others if they do not live up to the standards of perfection that it holds. Something the husband pays extra attention to is the physical appearance of the blind man. The husband goes into great detail about the other man’s appearance, thus reflecting society’s condescending views. The husband describes the blind man as “[in his] the late forties, a heavy-set, balding man” with “stooped shoulders” (Carver 5). The narrator judges Robert by his outward appearance instead of making an effort to delve deep into Robert and judge him on what truly matters. Throughout the story, the narrator mentions Robert’s beard. He thinks it is odd for the blind man to have a beard because he cannot see it. The husband’s views stop at the outward appearance of others instead of judging them by what is deeper than the eye can see, thus reflecting his similarity to the shallow views of society.

Furthermore, a large symbol in the short story is alcohol; alcohol illustrates the narrator’s jealousy over his wife and Robert’s close relationship. At the beginning of the story, the husband is in his most superficial and jealous state. The narrator is jealous of the emotional bond that his wife and the blind man hold. The narrator’s wife and Robert have been sending tapes back and forth for years since the narrator’s wife moved away. The actions between the blind man and the narrator’s wife sent the narrator into jealous turmoil, thus leading him to drink his jealousy away. The wife’s “ineradicable memory of this intimate [physical] touch” by the blind man causes the narrator’s jealousy to flare up yet again (Simpson). The narrator is consumed by jealousy which in turn causes him to continue to drink with his wife and the blind man. When the wife recalls the touch of the blind man, the narrator’s “fear of betrayal and abandonment” also come to the surface (Simpson). The husband is afraid that his wife is going to leave him because of the deep emotional bond his wife and Robert had developed and kept over many years.

Additionally, another symbol in the short story is the tapes. The tapes symbolize the significance of physical touch and face to face connections. The tapes are just a substitution for physical contact and real conversations. Robert mentions that “this beats tapes, doesn’t it” when the narrator’s wife is speaking to him (Carver 8). The real-time conversations are most important to Robert because that is how he is able to connect with other characters in the story. Though the tapes have kept Robert and the narrator’s wife connected throughout the years, being able to talk is extremely special because of the strong bond they share. Additionally, the tapes are special to Robert because they are like letters to him. Since he is unable to read letters, the tapes take the place of letters in his world. Now that the narrator’s wife and Robert can speak face to face, the bond they share is strengthened even more.

Towards the end of the story, the symbol of the cathedral begins to really take shape. Carver uses the cathedral to symbolize secular spirituality. At first, the husband’s outlook on cathedrals is shallow; he views them as simply unimpressive and boring. His views on the cathedral strongly reflect his inability to find true meaning and purpose in his life. The narrator asks Robert if he knows what a cathedral is. Robert knows very little; therefore, he asks the other man to “describe one to [him]” (Carver 11). The narrator is unable to describe a cathedral due to his inability to see the voluptuousness of the cathedral. He sees the cathedral as something on a tv and not as something much larger than what he is able to perceive with his shallow mindset. As Robert asks the narrator to draw a cathedral with him, his shallow views begin to fade. The simple task triggers a change in the narrator’s outlook on the cathedral. His newfound views are a complete turnaround from his previous attitude toward them. After the narrator is finished drawing the cathedral, he keeps his eyes closed to savor the moment. The narrator and the blind man have a moment where they really begin to connect. When the narrator is drawing the cathedral, Robert recommends that the narrator “close [his] eyes,” thus leading to the narrator being able to really relax and focus on the task he is doing (Carver 13). Tracy Caldwell, a well-known writer, suggests that the reason the husband keeps his eyes closed once he is finished drawing is that he has an epiphany about what it really means to be blind (Caldwell). The narrator experiences personal growth and gains the ability to see deeper into things rather than what is on the surface, thus reflecting back to the symbol of secular spirituality.

Lastly, one of the most important symbols in the short story is blindness. This can represent the narrator’s lack of perception of others and Robert’s physical blindness. The narrator navigates the world by sight, thus leading him to judge things upon first experiencing them. On the other hand, the blind man navigates the world by touch. This creates a deeper meaning because Robert is able to appreciate the little things because he is unable to see them and judge them as the narrator can. At the end of the story, the blind man is able to envision the drawing of the cathedral by simply tracing the lines drawn on the paper by the narrator. The husband explicitly describes the actions of the blind man. He says that Robert “felt around over the paper” and “moved the tips of his fingers” across the paper (Carver 13). The way the narrator describes the blind man’s actions goes to show that he is beginning to pay more attention to the little details. The narrator begins to work around his inability to see past the basic view of something and gets to explore the deeper meanings of what people do.

The overall symbolism of blindness, alcohol, the tapes, and the cathedral in the story is heavily impactful on the reader’s perception of the story. Though the narrator is unable to see past the immediate judgments he gets toward other characters at the beginning of the story, he is able to alleviate the shallow views he holds and allow himself to see past Robert’s blindness. Seeing the deeper meaning is extremely important when it comes to navigating the world today. Seeing past the outward appearance of things creates a new mindset and allows one to open up their mind to other things.

Works Cited

1. Caldwell, Tracy M. “Raymond Carver’s ‘Cathedral.’” Literary Contexts in Short Stories: Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” Mar. 2006, pp. 1–8. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=18898049&site=lrc-live. 22 September 2019.
2. Carver, Raymond. “Cathedral.” New York: Vintage Companies, 1983. http://www.giuliotortello.it/ebook/cathedral.pdf, 22 September 2019.
3. Simpson, Sara. “Boston University Arts & Sciences Writing Program.” Alcohol, Emotion, and Tension in Raymond Carver’s Fiction ‘ Writing Program ‘ Boston University, Boston University, www.bu.edu/writingprogram/journal/past-issues/issue-7/simpson/, 22 September 2019.

In ‘Cathedral’ written by Raymond Carver, the life of a married couple is disrupted when the wife’s blind friend comes for a visit. The blind man is named Robert. His wife recently died, and he came to visit her family. Robert decides to stay at the couple’s home. The husband, who is the narrator, is not too happy with the fact Robert is staying at their home and finds his blindness to be unsettling. Robert and the narrator’s wife have been friends for ten years. They met when the wife used to work for Robert as his reader. At a certain point the wife became unhappy with her struggling marriage and tried to commit suicide, but survived. She and the blind man kept in touch through tapes they would send each other back and forth. While the narrator can see, he can’t to make any friends and struggles with his wife. Robert on the other hand is blind but able to understand the emotional lives of others. Within the short story we see that Carver constructs empathy through listening as a form of perception.

The married couple have a difficult relationship with one another. They have a disconnection which is shown by disorder as small as sleep. The narrator mentioned: “Every night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep. My wife and I hardly ever went to bed at the same time” (Carver, 9). They go to bed in different rooms and have different times of sleep. The couple had a verbal fight right before Robert arrives. Both oppose one another in the argument. The narrator does not want the blind man in his house while the wife wants her husband to be nice to her friend. When Robert arrives into the home, it is clear that the narrator does not listen to or understand his wife. The narrator asks various rude questions. To avoid further conversating with Robert, the narrator turns on the television. Understandably, the wife was mad and looked at husband “with irritation. She was heading toward a boil” (Carver, 7). Clearly the narrator must not be caring for what his wife tells him and is quite obviously doing the opposite of everything she told him.

The problems between the marriage of narrator and his wife seem to come from the narrator not being able to empathize and understand her, leaving the narrator with only a superficial understanding of who she really is. The narrator cares little of the poetry his wife writes about a significant moment in her life, when Robert touched her face at the last day of working for him. “I can remember I didn’t think much of the poem”, the narrator says (Carver, 1). Hence, he seems unable to grasp the poem; despite the emotional significance that it has held in the life of his wife. And his reluctance to hear one of the audiotapes shared between Robert and the narrator’s wife is an even more straightforward example of the narrator’s unwillingness to listen. When the narrator decides to listen to a tape he is mentioned on, the narrator causes the listening to be sidetracked by an intrusion (someone at the door). We never get back to the tape because he says he preferred not to. The narrator seems to resent his wife’s relationship with Robert because it’s focused on the empathetic listening and empathy that the narrator doesn’t provide her or is capable of even giving in the first place.

While the narrator struggles, Robert on the other hand is shown to have conversational dynamic with the narrator and his wife, which shows that he is a good listener. Robert is always empathic and interested in what anyone has to say, good or bad. The friendship Robert has with the narrator’s wife backs up the fact Robert is a good listener. The friendship relies on sending tapes and listening without seeing means discussion and clarification are hard to get through, but Robert is fully capable of having an understanding of the wife. When the narrator is extremely rude and flaky, Robert never stopped being friendly to him showing Robert’s true empathy towards others. Due to the fact that Robert is so friendly, empathetic, and kind, the narrator’s reaction is that of a transformation that changed the narrator into a better person.

The lives of a married couple are disrupted when the wife’s blind friend, Robert, comes for a visit. The husband, who is in fact the narrator, is not able to empathize and understand others. The narrator is not even capable of making any friends due to this. On the other hand, the Robert is able to understand the emotional lives of others and is superior at being empathic. The narrator has all his senses while Robert does not. We see within the short story ‘Cathedral’, the author Raymond Carver constructs empathy through listening to be a superior form of perception to that of even being able to see and being able to clearly see discussion and clarifications.