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Cathedral Raymond Carver
In his short story, Cathedral, author Raymond Carver argues that community and connection are an important component of life. The narrator begins the story as an isolated man, with few friends and little connection to the outside world. His insularity is upset by the arrival of his wife's friend, a blind man. Initially highly resistant to the blind man's intrusion into his world, the narrator gradually warms to the man through a meal and describing a television program. However, the narrator is not fully moved out of his insulated world until he and the blind man begin to draw a cathedral together. It is this experience that reinforces the importance of connection and community within Carver's Cathedral.
At the beginning of the story, the narrator is clearly isolated from the rest of the world. He sees the world in a defined, stereotypical way, avoids connections with other people, and is unhappy at work. He notes that he spends most of his nights smoking cannabis in front of the TV, and that...
The narrator's wife notes "You don't have ANY friends," and the narrator relies largely on movies for his assessments of the outside world. Even his relationship with his wife is strained, as the narrator notes that his wife seems disappointed with him. Writes Carver, "My wife finally took her eyes off the blind man and looked at me. I had the feeling she didn't like what she saw. I shrugged."
The narrator is largely unaware of how insulated he is from the rest of the world, and how his prejudices limit his life and choices. He is baffled by the idea of a blind man, and unable to comprehend how touching the blind man's face could have changed his wife's life. Further, the narrator is unable to understand the importance of poems to his wife.
Initially, the narrator is highly resistant to his the visit of his wife's friend, the blind man, and his insularity makes it difficult for him to connect with the blind man. He seems resentful of his wife's relationships…
Works Cited
Carver, Raymond. 1989. Cathedral. Random House, Inc.
Cathedral - Raymond Carver About the author An American writer Raymond Carver has been writing stories on a smaller emotional scale for few years that creates same effects. Mostly his story settings contain American towns, semi-industrial, which are mostly depressed. However, his characters, working-class loners fighting for speech, from time to time find work as factory hands and waitresses, while his actions in the stories slip across the troubles of every day
The beginning of the end being her attempted suicide, due to the fact that she felt disconnected from him, her first husband, and the world, as he was in the military and they had constantly moved away from human connections she had made. (Carver NP) Her second marriage, to the insular narrator, going to bed at different times, and he sitting up watching late night television in his insular
Cathedral Raymond Carver's short story "The Cathedral" develops the theme of seeing the world clearly by using rich symbolism, irony, character development, and a postmodern tone and style. The blind man represents an unconventional mode of perception. Without a fundamental sensory input, the blind man relies on alternative methods of acquiring information and especially of interacting with others. His sightlessness at first bothers the narrator, but by the end of the
Raymond Carver, "Cathedral" Raymond Carver's short story "Cathedral" is narrated in the first person by the unnamed protagonist, and tells a deceptively simple story: the narrator's wife (also unnamed) has invited her former employer Robert, an older blind man recently widowed, to come for dinner and stay the night. The husband is resistant to the social occasion, but goes through with it -- although his narration makes us privy to his
Robert lost his wife, he is blind, and he is forced to interact with a person that the narrator believes he feels attracted to. All of these problems seem to be unimportant for the man and this influences the narrator in acknowledging his personal misery. The narrator accepts that he is doomed to being miserable because he is unable to appreciate life and the privileges that nature provided him
Raymond Carver's short story "Cathedral" explores a number of different social and psychological issues including stereotyping and prejudice. When the blind male friend of the narrator's wife enters their home, issues related to self-esteem, sexuality, and racism also arise. The blind man, Robert, helps the narrator to "see," serving a symbolic function of enlightenment. Cannabis provides the means by which the two men bond on an emotional and intellectual level,