Essay on The Cathedral by Raymond Carver

The story of Cathedral, by Raymond Carver, shows that you do not have to see someone or something in order to appreciate them for who or what they are. It is about a husband, the narrator, and his wife who live in a house. The wife, whose name they do not mention, has a very close friend who is blind. His name is Robert. Robert's wife dies, and comes to their house to spend a couple of days with the narrator and his wife. The narrator, whose name they do not mention as well, is always on edge because he does not really know Robert very well and he does not like blind people, but he is being friendly for his wife's sake. The story comes to an end when Robert and the narrator draw a cathedral together using the narrator's hand and helped by

In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” the narrator is seen to show ignorance and bias towards blindness throughout the story, however towards the end he realizes his flaws and the difference between looking and seeing. From the beginning of the story to the end you can see a change within the narrator after his encounter with the blind man. At the end of Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” the narrator hopes to accomplish a change in his understanding of himself, and his experience with Robert flickers this change towards the end of the story.

The narrator in “The Cathedral” begins the story with the issue of hesitation in seeing the light. The light in this story just like the light in Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” represents reality. The narrator expresses the fear of expressing reality when he said “ I wasn’t

“Cathedral” written by Raymond Carver is a short story that unfolds as a first-person narrative of the main character named Bub. The story beautifully depicts the process of an individual who transforms from a person with lack of knowledge and ignorant towards knowledgeable soul, due to an encounter with his wife’s blind friend Robert, to an individual that is enlightened. The cathedral, in this story, is a mere subject brought up at the end of this story which becomes the object of Bub's enlightenment. “Cathedral,” tells a tale of Bub who through a blind man receives an eye-opening experience. The narrator starts off as intolerable, but towards the end of the story, with the assistance of a blind man makes him open-minded. Bub is clobbered and drives him to the epiphany of, how he views Robert mirrors how views his life. His epiphany is shown through the author's by the narrator’s jealousy, the consumption of alcohol, food, cannabis, and Bub’s wife falling asleep; which shows the narrator’s preconceived notations, the connection formed between Bub and Robert, and how out of obliviousness Bub gained insight.

Cathedral is narrated by a man whose wife has invited her old friend to visit their home. The narrator is troubled by his visit in more ways than one and for reasons he can’t explain. His negative attitude towards the blind man says it all, but drawing the Cathedral with him becomes a life changing experience for the narrator. One evening the narrator is asked by Robert to try and explain the cathedrals they saw on TV. The narrator wonders how he will ever explain cathedrals to a blind man who has never saw anything before. The narrator tries, but realizes he can’t. Finally he says, “The truth is, cathedrals don’t mean anything special to me. Nothing. They’re something to look at on late night TV. That’s all they are” (Carver 41). Not only

Richard Carver’s “Cathedral” focuses on the dealing and overcoming of predispositions. On a more critical accord, “Cathedral” exemplifies the testing journey of marriage. Carver reveals the reality of close outside friendships impends on marriage through unsettling insecurities, conflicting emotions, and ultimately leading to betrayal.

Raymond Carver’s short story, “Cathedral”, depicts a story that someone-------?. It starts off with the narrator talking about his wife and a blind man who comes to visit them more so his wife. It’s the first time narrator would be meeting Robert the blind man. The narrator already has assumptions of what the blind are like, many proven wrong when they finally interaction. At the end, the narrator’s perspective is changed from their interaction.

In his short story “Cathedral” Raymond Carver uses a unnamed narrator to tell his story in a first person point of view. Other than his name we get to know that he has a wife who's blind friend's, Robert, wife just passed away and he is visiting her family in Connecticut. During Roberts stay in Connecticut he will be staying at their house. While the man was able to see perfectly from his eyes he wasn't able to see his surroundings and others feelings. On the other hand Robert was lacking eye sight but was able to understand people very well. The narrator feels bad for Robert because he has never seen his wife, but the truth is he saw and understood her in his own way. Sometimes we can see someone but can't really see what they are feeling or trying to say.

Humans tend to take multiple aspects of life for granted such as their five senses. Many people use their two eyes every day to look at the world around them, but they do not see all of the life around them. Some people take the same flight of stairs everyday at their workplace or school campus for years on end, but if one asked them how many steps the staircase held then they would more than likely draw a blank. This staircase example represents the difference between looking and seeing. Looking requires the physical act of utilizing the eyes, but seeing requires a deeper level of thinking only accessed through one’s brain. Throughout “Cathedral”, Raymond Carver uses the point of view, the characters, and the symbols to show the theme of

Born on May 25, 1938 in Clatskanie, Oregon, Raymond Carver was destined to be a writer. He was a son of a sawmill worker and grew up working hard majority of his life. He married year after he finished high school and had two children with his wife at the time. He raised and supported his children with normal working class jobs such as delivering, janitorial and gas station services. Carver discovered his interest in writing after taking a creative writing course in college in 1958. His first success was in 1967 from the story “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” and ended up becoming a fulltime writer after losing his job at the time. He drank heavily and had problems with alcoholism around the same time, but he shortly recovered from that and started teaching at the University of Texas at El Paso and Syracuse University. A few years later in 1983 he won a literary award which made him focus on his full-time writing. His short story collection consisted of “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” “Cathedral,” and “Where I’m Calling from.” In his short stories he mostly wrote about the everyday lives most experienced and problems of the poor, broken marriages, and financial problems. He died at the age of 50 of lung cancer but his stories continue to live on.

A cathedral is known to be a place where a person performs religious practices in the light of one or more deities. Cathedrals can connect people who share the same beliefs by gathering them all together; the same goes for any religion. In the short story, “Cathedral,” written by Raymond Carver, the controlling image is a cathedral, as it is repetitive from becoming the title of the story to the main symbol through the entirety of the narration. Carver makes an appeal to emphasize that – through the story’s plot, his style of writing, the captivating use of imagery, and the overall theme of the story – a simple building can shed some light on how one chooses to view the world.

There are three short stories with characters who are very alike. In the short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the protagonist, Bub, has an unwanted visitor. Similarly, in the story “Everyday use” by Alice Walker, the character Dee visits her mother and sister, which turns into a very unpleasant encounter. Lastly, the main character, Hulga, in “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor, is deceived by her visitor, a bible salesman, Manely Pointer. In all three of these short stories, the central characters share similar motives and characteristics.

What is your thought of a Cathedral? This paper will be explaining what the symbols between the narrator and the blind man are. In the short story “Cathedral” it is difficult for the narrator to see the cathedrals, and how the blind man is trying to teach the narrator to see the world through his eyes, but the narrator does not see anything when he closes his eyes. This story teaches the reader about how others can help them to use their imagination to see the world better. There are many ways to see the world, for a person who sees they see the reality of what the world looks like, while for a person who is blind they can imagine what the world looks like, and many times they ask others to describe it to them.

Robert is a blind man, but he has got good insight than the narrator who hardly understands the feelings of people. When the narrator comes to know from his wife that Robert is going to visit them he is not happy. He thinks what he has to do with a blind man at home. This shows his egoistic nature. He has not mingled with blind before and he thinks he is superior. He behaves to Robert keeping this superiority complex in him. He has lot of misconcepts about the blind. He thinks the blind cannot make the women happy. Roberts wife Beula recently died and the narrator thinks she did not live a happy life with Robert. Narrator thinks Roberts wife might have suffered much living with him, but at the same time he does not see what his life suffers living with him. He lacks the ability to understand his wife and at the same time he thinks bad of other people.

The fact that the narrator’s wife could trust him, to pour out her emotional turmoil was a clear indication to this. It can be safely said that Robert’s responses to the narrator’s wife kept her strong and made her overcome her challenges. Another interesting character of the blind man was his keen desire to learn new things. After all, the smoking of cannabis was his first time.