Power in Cathedral and Ethics
People in the position of power have the authority to influence the world around them. With this power should come responsibility. Those with the power to change the world must stand behind their actions. They have the responsibility to take ownership of their choices and they also have the implicit responsibility of bettering the lives of the people around them. In Carver's "Cathedral" and Pastan's "Ethics" are both short stories which deal with individuals with power and how those people utilize their positions responsibly or shirk their responsibility in favor of personal pleasure.
In Carver's "Cathedral," the story begins with the narrator informing the reader that he is uncomfortable with his impending visitor because the man is blind. This narrator is seemingly dismissive of everything; not only the blind man or his relationship with the man's wife, but dismissive of his wife's first marriage, of her poetry writing, and of her experience with the blind man feeling her face. Narrator looks down upon this blind man based on stereotypes from other...
He makes slights against the wife's first husband even refusing to name him. He also shows himself to have bigoted attitudes. Commenting on the blind man's dead wife, he says, "Her name was Beulah. Beulah! That's a name for a colored woman" (Carver 3). Since the husband is the white male who has his vision, he sees himself as superior to all the others around him. All he does is sit around his home and complain to his wife and
drink and yet because of his prejudices to what he views are physical inferiorities, he can label himself as the more powerful entity.
In the story, it is really the blind man Robert and the wife who have the power. She is influenced by the male presence around her, even allowing her husband to convince her that she is not powerful. It is only after being given clear vision through her blind friend that she can see the world as it truly is. "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" (Carver 7). This is the power shift in the story. Robert, the blind man, is the impetus for change and that makes the husband fear. He believes in his superiority but has no chance of holding onto it if there is any challenge. "I waited in vain to hear my name on my wife's sweet lips: 'And then my dear husband came into my life' -- something like that. But I heard nothing of the sort" (9). The narrator becomes angry when the wife and her friend discuss the past decade of their lives together like the old friends they are. As a blind man…
