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Cathedral
Character Analysis: Cathedral Narrator
The objective of this study is to present an argument that the narrator in 'Cathedral' is a complex and sympathetic character and to consider the extent to which he seems unaware with his own limitations despite being incapable of articulating that unhappiness. The narrator in the work of Raymond Carver entitled "Cathedral" is a complex and sympathetic character who is unaware of his own limitations and essentially unhappy even though he is incapable of articulating that unhappiness and learns from a blind man that unless one is aware of their limitations that those limitations cease to exist. The work 'Cathedral' is about a visit paid by a blind man to his friend, the wife of the narrator, following the death of the blind man's wife. While the wife greatly anticipates the visit of the blind man, the husband and narrator of 'Cathedral' has a great deal of anxiety about the blind man's visit. When the blind man arrives the husband is surprised to find that when...
The narrator and husband in this story is amazed at the mobility of the blind man and the blind man's positive attitude about his condition of blindness. After having eaten dinner together the wife, husband/narrator, and blind man sit down to talk. Eventually the wife goes to sleep and the blind man and the husband/narrator are watching and listening to programs on the television.
The narrator of 'Cathedral' is a complex character who is greatly sympathetic with the plight of the blind man however, the narrator appears at first to be shallow and assuming. The narrator does not appear to be the type of individual that adheres closely to the learning about anything or anyone new or different and is therefore hesitant to meet his wife's blind friend. The narrator also appears to be a shallow individual as the story begins and he asks his wife if she would like him to take her blind friend…
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
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
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, a story by Raymond Carver, there are three main characters: a husband, a wife, and the wife's blind, male friend. The story is told in the first person, from the point-of-view of the husband, and the mood and tone of the story is austere and tense. At the beginning of the story, the character of the husband is hostile, and angry that the wife's blind friend is coming to
Carver's "Cathedral" An Analysis of Theme and Plot in Carver's "Cathedral" Raymond Carver states that by the mid-1960s he had tired of reading and writing "long narrative fiction" ("On Writing" 46). Shorter fiction, he found, was more immediate. Flannery O'Connor states a similar idea in The Habit of Being: for her, the novel was a literary medium that could bog down all of one's creative powers. Turning to a short story was
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,