Cathedral Teaching Blindsight In Carver's Cathedral

“Cathedral” by Carver isn’t a story that immediately grabbed my attention. By the way that the story is written to the actual story itself, it was missing something that made me want to continue reading it at first, but then I realized that there is a purpose for it being that way. I felt disconnected because that’s how the husband felt. This story had more to it than the author lead on. After looking back at the story I realized that although one of the characters is blind, it’s actually two that were blind and the second being the husband.

Through Deaf Eyes is a documentary that focuses on two-hundred years of Deaf culture. This film is very enriching and teaches the viewer a variety of different information. In the film it states that Deaf people were considered to be locked away from the “word” of God. Adding onto that, although Deaf people can not hear that does not mean that they cannot believe

P5:1 “Blindness Removed in Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," a document written in English 1020 addresses false perceptions created by the media. This will need to be peer reviewed. In Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral” he writes about the effects of media and resulting perceptions and prejudices about blind people that are expressed through the narrator. The narrator has never met a blind person, but has seen examples of blind people in the movies that walk slowly, fail to laugh and use seeing-eye dogs (Carver 108-116). Likewise, the narrator has read that blind men are nonsmokers, but Robert seems to be like any other man who marries, has sex, smokes, eats and has a television on (Carver 108-116). A television program Robert and the narrator

In the beginning of Raymond Carver’s, “Cathedral” the protagonist, who was also the narrator, was not sympathetic towards the blind man. The main character had many preconceived notions about blind people and did not consider life inside their shoes. When they first met, the protagonist felt disgust and lack of empathy towards Robert, the blind man, but he restrained from showing his emotions. It is also very noticeable that the main character was continually jealous of the attention and admiration that his wife gave to her friend, Robert. “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” (Carver 37). It was an immature mindset that was caused by an unsympathetic and uninterested thought

While the only literal blind character in Raymond Carver’s Cathedral is Robert, the narrator exhibits his own blindness in a variety of ways throughout the story. In the beginning of the story, the narrator is close-minded about the blind man soon to be visiting him. He makes assumptions about the man with stereotypes such as blind people not smoking due to their inability to see the smoke. Even though the narrator “…knew that much and that much only about blind people,” he was soon proven wrong when Robert smoked a cigarette (39). This demonstrates the narrator’s blindness to Robert’s characteristics other than his lack of sight.

Cathedral was written by Raymond Carver he was a working-class man who married at the age of nineteen and had two children and ended up dying of lung cancer. This story has three characters a blind man named Robert, the narrator, and the narrator’s wife, it starts out with the wife tell the husband which is the narrator that her longtime friend was going to spend the night which is Robert, which makes the husband a little jealous feeling like the blind man was coming to steal his wife. The story takes a wide turn when the Robert becomes more human-like than the narrator. I feel like blind people have more sense of life than people that can see. People that can see are sometimes blinded by their own wants and needs which makes them slow to see the big picture and with blind people because they can’t see they a care about other’s wants and needs.

When one thinks of being blind, they think of someone who literally can not see, but one can also be blind by lacking perception or awareness. People who have sight and yet are blind is clearly seen in the book, To Kill a Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird is a story based in the 1930’s when racial issues are heavily present. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, and throughout history, people or groups of people have existed who can literally see the world around them, and yet are blind to the truth; but, as seen in the novel, some of these people’s eyes can be opened to the truth either by empathy or experiences.

Carver uses irony to show that the narrator is incapable of understanding another person until he learns

Cathedral is a short story written by Raymond Carver in 1983, about a prejudiced man who meets a disabled man. Through “Cathedral,” it becomes clear that the visit of the blind man Robert in the narrator’s house may change the narrator from stereotyping to accepting disabled people; this illustrates Carver’s theme which displays human insensitivity through the narrator’s reluctance because of fear, then acceptance, and finally understanding of Robert.

As we gain knowledge we gain understanding, giving us a different view of the world. In the story, “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the author takes us through a day in the life of a husband who is forced by his wife to meet and entertain her longtime friend Robert- who happens to be blind. The husband is not exactly excited by this visit. The author illustrates the characters’ development beginning as apprehensive and jealous, transitioning to more of an uncomfortable feeling, and finally ending with acceptance as the husband is put into a situation where he gains a new understanding of the blind man. He ends the story with his eyes closed and a mind open to a new view of the world.

Franz Kafka’s short story The Metamorphosis, becoming a beetle gives Gregor insight on his family. Raymond Carver’s short story The Cathedral, shows Bub, a once judgmental man, the insight on blindness. Before their changes, they were blinded by what was in front of them. Life changes cause Gregor’s and Bub’s perspective to differ from what they once were.

Raymond Carver reveals the identify in people with the similarities of his characters and everyday humans, like you and me. Characters in his stories are the are peopled with the type of lower-middle-class status. Carver’s fictional world is a place where people are average everyday people; some strange, never perfect, just normal. Living the lives as waitresses, mechanics, postmen, high school teachers, factory workers, and door-to-door salesmen. Not living in a magical wonderland story, but in the dull, uninteresting tale of the drab life of the usual hardworking person.

A sighted person fails to acknowledge his or her lack of perception until he or she becomes blind. Although defense mechanisms allow people to feel better by dissociating or by heightening other senses for the blind, they have their painful downsides.

In the short story, Carver shows his message through the interactions between the young couple and the man. Throughout the story, the boy neglects the girl’s desire for intimacy,

This self-evaluation helps the characters overcome their crisis of communication, which progressively transforms them throughout the story. Minimalism simultaneously affects the different forms of communication in Carvers writing.