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Literary theme alienation
Literary theme alienation
The theme of loneliness in the novel
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The protagonist in “Cathedral,” Bub, is a man who has several defining characteristics. Bub is insecure, insensitive, and ignorant. This is clearly shown in Bub’s relationships with his wife and Robert. Bub’s insecurities are blatantly shown when he comments on his wife’s ex-husband:
Her officer-why should be have a name? He was her childhood sweetheart, and what more does he want?
Bub resents the ex-husband for being his wife’s first love. He would have liked to have had that role so he negatively addresses his wife’s past relationships. Bub’s unconfident mannerisms further transpire when he comments on his wife’s relationship with Robert. He states:
In time she put it all on tape and sent the tape to the blind man. Over the years she put all kinds of stuff on tapes and sent the tapes off lickety-split. Next to writing a poem every year, I think it was her chief recreation. On the tape, she told the blind man she’d decided to live away from her officer for a time. On another tape she told him about her divorce. She and I began going out, and of course she told her blind man about it. She told him everything, or so it seemed to me.
This intense friendship between his wife and Robert further exacerbated his insecurities. Robert and his wife have an intimate relationship that Bub has never, and probably will never, have with his wife. He goes on to say:
My wife finally took her eyes off the blind man and looked at me. I had the feelings she didn’t like what she saw. I shrugged.
This relationship offers Bub only one consolation, he believes that because he can see that has an advantage. He constantly refers to Robert as “the blind man.” He never uses Robert’s name or assigns any human attributes to him. This insecurity is partially responsible for his wife’s continued involvement with Robert.
Also responsible for his wife’s close relationship with Robert is Bub’s inability to feel. He exhibits a great lack of emotional depth. Bub comments on Robert’s marriage:
They’d married, lived and worked together, slept together-had sex, sure- and then the blind man had to bury her. All this without having never seen what the goddamned woman looked like.
He has no feelings of sympathy for the loss of Robert’s wife. Bub goes on to comment about his wife telling him exactly happened to Robert’s wife. He says, “My wife filled me in w...
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...s his freedom from his sheltered and close-minded life.
The overall themes of the story were alienation and loneliness. The main characters experience, and have experienced alienation and loneliness. Bub is discontented in his work, envious of his wife, and isolated from other human beings and also from himself. Because of this, Bub resents his wife’s connections with other people. Keening this in mind, Bub makes no effort to correct this problem. When Robert arrives he makes to attempt to engage him in conversation. He prefers to remain cut off and observe. As the conversation breaks, Bub turns on the television, which is not only extremely impolite, but one that offers proof of Bub’s detachment with his wife and her friend.
The story demonstrates an interesting sort of irony. The disability that Bub condemned and presupposed was in fact a handicap that he had himself. He was emotionally blind. Robert assisted Bub in overcoming those traits that were keeping him from experiencing the most wonderful things in life. This freed Bub from his insecurities, ignorance, and insensitivities. He was then capable of truly seeing.
Upon the arrival of his wife’s friend, the husband is ultimately uncomfortable around Robert because he does not know how to communicate with or act around him. His discomfort is revealed when Robert and his wife were sharing their experiences “about the major things that had come to pass for them in the past ten years” (367). He felt it was necessary to join in because he thought Robert would “think [he] left the room and didn’t want [his wife] to think [he] was feeling left out” (367). It is obvious the husband is overly involved with Robert’s handicap and fails to see him as a person with his own thoughts and ideas.
Bub’s misconceptions are now completely flipped as Robert is helping Bub with something Bub does not understand at all. It is as if Bub is the incapable one and Robert is his guide. By the time Bub and Robert are holding hands and drawing a picture together, Bub has released all his previous misconceptions and some of his insecurities. This is when Bub really begins to see the side of Robert that perhaps is why his wife loves him so much.
The close outside friendship between the narrator’s wife and Robert, the blind man, provokes the narrator’s insecurities. This friendship has lasted for ten long years. During those years, they have exchanged countless voice tapes wherein they both tell each other what has happened in their respective lives. Because of this, the narrator feels that his wife has told Robert more than Robert needs to know. The narrator laments, "she told him everything or so it seemed to me" (1054). The narrator’s fear is somehow confirmed when Robert arrives and says that he feels like they have already met (1055). The narrator is left wondering what his wife has disclosed. This murky situation leaves the narrator feeling insecure, especially when he sees the warm interaction between his wife and Robert.
I married George because I thought he was a gentleman, I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe. He is no more of value than of the ashes of the valley. The pathetic, delusional man; thinking he really can please me with stupid words. ‘I love you Myrtle. I would do anything for you, and you know that’. But we all know that words are not REALLY made of gold, don’t we?
As a result of his inability to relate with Robert, he thinks his behaviors are odd, and is unable to understand the relationship he has with his wife. His wife worked for this blind man many years ago, reading him reports and case studies, and organizing his "...little office" (Carver 98) in the county's social-service department. He remem¬ bers a story his wife told about the last day she worked for him. The blind man asked her if he could touch her face, and she agreed.
we are afraid of different thing in our lives, And one of them is is a fear of emptiness,so that makes people don’t feel the reality. And exactly like Bub ,Bub by being able to visualize he did not have the advantage to feel the true reality of anything in his life including himself.car is a good example,some people just see how a car look likes but other see what is beneath that massive piece of metal, and they are who enjoy the most out of a car because they truly understand how it works . so lets move on from cars and talk about Bub, from the begging Bub did not put hime self in Robert’s shoes to understand being blind is bad or good, he instantly thought about perspective of being blind in the movies ,as he said “his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs” (Carver 28) so thats a strong example of just visualizing rather than trying to understand the concept of being blind in grater depth . so when people are using this method to understand others around them they will start to fill the same thing about themselves too.which makes them to have a low self-esteem “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” (Carver 31) someone say something like this about theme selves because they don’t know what they are capable of.when bub said “she did’t like what she saw.” (31) it was more like i did not like what i see in myself, because he thinks Robert is better than him and he cant be like Robert.this makes people weaker and weaker every day when they think this way about them selves.and then they want to forget about it beca...
He didn’t like the fact that his wife had a new friend that was going to stay with them and he felt threatened by their closeness. He selfishly says, “ I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me” (Cathedral 86). He clearly didn’t have compassion for that fact that Robert was disabled and that his wife had just died. All he cared about was his own feelings and his own relationship with his wife. He also had the nerve to go on and say, “ My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Some times they were led by Seeing Eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (Cathedral 86). He was clearly uninformed and biases when it came to people with disabilities or people that were different from him. He didn’t look at the situation as an opportunity to get to see something different and learn but to complain for pretty much the entire short
The narrator also feels intimidated by his wife?s relationship with the blind man. When he is telling of her friendship with Robert h...
At this point, Justin's wife Carol is so upset by the situation and blames Dr. Lash so she decides to enter therapy with him in the hope of seducing him. She looks down on all psychiatrists after her psychotherapist many years ago had an inappropriate sexual relationship with her. She disguises herself in hopes of destroying his career.
Their relationship was easy and drama free almost provoking jealousy for Terri and her bad experience with love. Then there is Mel, who attempted to define love since there was so many levels to the spectrum of love. He described how after being in love with his ex wife it turned into hate and how he thought he loved her but ended up wanting to kill her. His love was at the end of the spectrum, once the love was gone. His ex wife was trying to bankrupt them and couldn’t even call his kids without having a argument with his ex wife. Mel and Terri’s relationship was filled with drama from both parties that they both had a bad experience with love that they had to start over. Mel tried using an example of an elderly couple that was a part of a tragic accident, but while telling the story he began to get cut off and the tension started to rise between Mel and Terri. Eventually Laura tells him to resume the story and he does. He was the doctor
The physical description of Robert obviously helps to visualize him and how he might carry himself. “This blind man was late forties, a heavy-set, balding man with stooped shoulders, as if he carried a great weight there. He wore brown slacks, brown shoes, a light-brown shirt, a tie, a sports coat” (Carver 107). Carver also gives us details of Roberts booming voice and friendly demeanor. These descriptions along with certain mannerisms help to create a mental image of the way Robert behaves. “He lifted his beard, sniffed it, and let it fall” (Carver 109). These subtle details makes a huge difference when reading. Just that little mannerism of Robert playing with his beard few times throughout the story better allows the reader to picture how he moves and interacts with the narrator while conversing. The way Robert continues to call the narrator “bub” is another unique detail of his character. Somehow, it fits his big friendly demeanor so well. This seems to be such a simple but effective way to create a unique characteristic for the reader. His calmness and ability to cope with the narrators sarcastic remarks successfully displays Robert as the compassionate and patient man that Carver intended to
...d the blind experience and it was like Robert was no longer the blind person in the house (Caldwell 3). As a result, this shows him the way to gaining a better understanding of his own self worth and heal from pass hurts by experiencing the transcendent of nature of life.
The narrator's insensitivity reveals itself early in the story when his wife's blind friend, Robert, comes for a visit after the death of his wife. Almost immediately in the beginning of the story the narrator admits "A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to." [Carver 2368] He even goes so far as to suggest to his wife that he take the man bowling. He hears the story of Robert's dead wife and can not even imagine " what a pitiful life this woman must have led." [Carver 2370] The narrator is superficial, only recognizing the external part of people and not recognizing the value of a person on the inside.
From the beginning of his tale, the husband is quite bland on the subject of love. This is present when he tells the part about his wife's first husband, even going as far as to say the man doesn't deserve to be named because "he was the childhood sweetheart, and what more does he want" (348). When he tells of Beulah, Robert's wife, and her tragic death, he shows no compassion in mocking her for marrying a blind man. He even asks if the woman was a "Negro" because of her name. His materialistic views shine through when he feels actually pity for her because she could "never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one" (349). His lack of compassion for the tale of the blind man's marriage tells the reader that maybe the husband himself doesn't believe in love. When he refers to his wife's first husband as "this man who'd first enjoyed her favors" and "shrugs" when he thinks his wife is disappointed in his actions, it informs the reader he may look at relationships, even his own, as more of a business deal than a devotion of love (348, 350). His wry humor is major indication of his sarcastic character. He even makes a crack to his wife about the blind man befo...
The husband's view on the world at the start of the story was a narrow one that was based on his ignorance, which prevented him from gaining understanding. His long held misconceptions, especially about blindness, defined his expectations about things he did not understand. For instance, when the husband found out that Robert was coming to stay, he disliked the idea of someone who was blind, let alone someone who he didn't know, coming to visit and the husband's "idea of blindness came from the movies." He saw the blind people as people who "moved slowly and never laughed." This was not the limit of his ignorance as it was further displayed by his constant referral of Robert as "the blind man" and his assumption of Robert's deceased wife being a black person based solely on the name of Beulah. This assumption display his bigotry is not limited to Robert's blindness and that differences that he did not understan...