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Literary analysis for raymond carver's cathedral
Literary analysis for raymond carver's cathedral
Literary analysis for raymond carver's cathedral
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You can never assume to know someone’s life, or anything about them unless you put your feet in their shoes, so to judge, is simply ignorance. Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" is a story about how the narrator is uncomfortable with having his wife's blind friend Robert over over.The narrator starts off with a biased attitude towards Robert the blind man who is his wife’s friend and is visiting her at there home. As the story goes on the narrator makes multiple judgmental remarks about Robert being blind before he even meets him. The narrator assumes that Robert will be a bother and just be in the way when he comes to visit, the narrator assumes this because of how he thinks a blind man is to be because of what he has seen in movies. This becomes …show more content…
The narrator’s wife has an old friend that’s his wife that has just died and so has him come visit her. From the beginning of the story, we see the narrator’s personality comes off very strong against not wanting his wife’s blind friend Robert to come to his house to visit. The narrator tells his wife that he isn’t happy about this visitor and that the man’s blindness unsettles him. The narrator seems very jealous of the fact that someone besides him is going to be taking his wife …show more content…
In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed”. You can clearly see that the narrator was the one that was blind, blinded by his own ignorance, the narrator than starts seeing the blind differently. However, he feels reluctant to have any conversation with the blind man till the middle of the story. After the narrators wife falls asleep they watch tv to avoid conversation, but the awkward silence seem to get to the narrator and for the first time he asks Robert a question with complete interest in the answer. The narrator asks “Something has occurred to me. Do you have any idea what a cathedral is? What they look like, that is? Do you follow me? If somebody says cathedral to you, do you have any notion what they’re talking about? Do you the difference between that and a Baptist church, say?” The narrator tries to describe a cathedral to
In Raymond Carver’s story, “Cathedral,” the story tells of how a close outside relationship can threaten a marriage by provoking insecurities, aggravating communication barriers, and creating feelings of invasion of privacy. The husband in the story is given the gift of seeing the cathedral through a blind man’s eyes. Although the title suggests that the story is about a cathedral, it is really about two men who come together and share a vision and realize it is he who is blind. As the story begins, the character of the husband has a negative personality. He lacks compassion, is narrow-minded, and is jealous of his wife’s friendship with a blind man named Robert.
In the short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the narrator, Bub, is as metaphorically blind as his guest, Robert, is literally blind. Bub has many unwarranted misconceptions about life, blind people in particular. He also has many insecurities that prevent him from getting too close to people. Through his interaction with Robert, Bub is able to open his mind and let go of his self-doubt for a moment and see the world in a different light.
Blindness in Raymond Carver's Cathedral Blindness creates a world of obscurity only to be overcome with guidance from someone willing to become intimate with the blind. Equally true, the perceptions of blindness can only be overcome when the blind allow intimacy with the sighted. Raymond Carver, with his short story Cathedral, illustrates this point through the eyes of a man who will be spending an evening with a blind man, Robert, for the first time. Not only does this man not know Robert, but his being blind, "bothered" (Carver 98) him.
In “Cathedral,” the narrator starts off as a single-minded man who fears what he does not know. For instance, when he discovers that his wife’s blind friend is spending the night, his words are, “A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (Carver 1). The narrator fears blindness because he is
The narrator in Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" has two fully functional eyes, in which he chooses never to use to their full potential. The eyes of the narrator are biased, insecure, jealous, and very limited in what they choose to see. This inability to see is made apparent when he is forced to meet and converse with a blind man. The narrator's perception of the world around him, and blurred vision, is resolved by a great irony in the story when Roger helps the narrator see past his prejudice outlook on life. The blind man teaches the narrator how to see.
Immediately, we as the reader can immediately pick up on the foreshadowing here. As time would go on, the narrator meets the man, whom he pejoratively refers to as “the blind man.” There is a sense that while the bland man is physically blind, on the other hand, the narrator is blind himself. Rather than taking the time to know the man’s name, about his children, or anything else about him, he immediately calls him by the disparaging title, “the blind man.” Between the two, there is an awkwardness. The man attempts to probe and question a bit, the meaningless charade of small-talk, but as time goes on, there is finally a breakthrough. When the wife, the glue between the man and the blind man’s awkwardness, goes to sleep, there is a change in tone. Now, the man is forced to interact with the blind man. Immediately from the onset, we learn that the man himself is a bit of a misanthrope. The wife derides him for “having no friends” and as time goes on in the story, we hear judgmental and presumptive notions from the
The story begins with the narrator feeling apprehensive and suspicious of his wife’s blind friend visiting their home. He specifically takes issue with the man’s disability. He notes to his wife: "I don't have any blind friends” (Carver 64). His wife, criticizing his lack of experience with other people as a whole, says: "You don't have any friends… Period" (Carver 64). Throughout the story, the author hints that the narrator’s distaste for the disabled comes less from experience and more from ignorance. He explains: “My idea of blindness came from the movies” (Carver 61). The narrator clearly has had little to no interaction with the disabled and thus has had his views on them shaped through the culture surrounding him. He looks at the blind not as human beings who happen to have lost their sight, but rather as vulnerable dependents who are overly reliant on society. As the narrator has intimate conversation with Robert, however, he begins to be more open in his interaction with the blind man. Citing the late time, the narrator offers to make up a bed for Robert. Robert turns down the offer in favor of spending more with the narrator. Instead of becoming irritated as one may expect, the narrator looks forward to their future conversations. He mentions to Robert that he is “… glad for the company" (Carver
After Robert’s wife dies he called the narrator’s wife from his in-laws’. They made arrangements and soon Robert would be on a train. He was going to come for a visit. This is the part where he narrator wasn’t thrilled about a blind man coming to stay. He said, “And his being blind bothered me,” (Carver 305) as well as, “My idea of blindness came from the movies.” (Carver 305) The fact that the narrator relies on the movies for his idea of blindness shows his lack of awareness. This is the main theme within this story.
“I have learned the hard way to mind my business, without judging who people are and what they do. I am more troubled by the lack of space being provided for the truth to unfold. Humans cannot seem to wait for or honor the truth. Instead, we make it up based on who we believe people should or should not be,”Iyanla Vanzant. When reading “Cathedral,” by Raymond Carver the blind Robert was constantly judged by the husband. This story is about a blind man visited his old friend the wife. The husband did not want to be around the man because he was blind. The husband put a channel on the tv and it starting talking about cathedrals. Robert the blind man asked the husband to describe a Cathedral he didn’t know how to describe the beauty of a Cathedral.
In Raymond Carver’s story “Cathedral” the narrator learns what it means to “see” through someone who cannot. To see is to be able to view the things around us while putting aside preconceived notions or fear about these objects or people. In order for this to occur once must overcome what they feel is out of the ordinary and learn to accept things as they are. At first the narrator is doesn’t accept the man and uncomfortable around Robert. The narrator soon comes to understand this when he puts aside his fears, and judgments that he can see more than what meets the eye, and the freedom that comes along with this seeing.
The blind man asks the husband to describe to him the image of a cathedral. The husband was unable to successfully compose an accurate description, because he didn’t understand the meaning and the symbolism of the building. He is not a man of religion, and he was watching the show only because he had nothing else to do. When asked to describe a cathedral he says, "Sometimes the cathedrals have devils and such carved into the front. Sometimes lords and ladies. Don't ask me why this is, I said" (558-561). He continues his description of why people built Cathedrals as “…In those olden days, when they built cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God. In those olden days, God was an important part of everyone's life. You could tell this from their cathedral-building.” (572-576). Robert asked the narrator if he belonged to any religion and he replied by saying “"I guess I don't believe in it. In anything. Sometimes It's hard. (586-587).” Compelled to think about the purpose of cathedrals, the narrator realizes that, they symbolize the struggles of the people which made them build those structures to get closer to God. What would make people do such a thing? Faith in religion sometimes give direction and meaning to peoples’
In Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral”, the narrator is of great interest in terms of analysis because he is the only dynamic character. That is, he experiences the most significant change throughout the story. So one might ask, how does Carver develop the character of the narrator over the course of the story? The author does so by using the concept of blindness as a mental state, as opposed to a physical disability. The narrator through his lack of relationships and emotion, and judgmental tendencies exhibits this “blindness”. It is as he becomes more aware of his ignorance that his character changes for the better.
The unnamed narrator of Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” poses as an unreliable narrator for his unaccepting nature towards blind people along with his ignorant perception of many realities in his life that Carver presents for the reader to take into question. The narrator holds prejudice against Robert, a blind man whom the narrator’s wife worked with ten years earlier and eventually befriends. Unperceptive to many of the actualities in his own life, the narrator paints an inaccurate picture of Robert that he will soon find to be far from the truth.
However, as the story progresses this image created by the narrator seems to disappear. The background the narrator gives the reader regarding Robert at the beginning of the story is not a flattering one. For instance, the narrator begins talking about a story his wife told him, how when she worked for Robert he asked to touch her face and afterwards she wrote a poem about this encounter. Robert explains to the reader that “She never forgot it” (Carver Par. 2). The narrator goes on to inform the reader that the very next helper the blind man had he ended up marrying. Furthermore, the narrator is presenting the facts about the story in a way that directs the reader to wonder whether his wife and Robert ever had a relationship that was more than just friends. This assumption that the narrator presumes to be correct is later extinguished once the narrator meets the blind man and quickly changes his mind about the matter and realizes that this was only a friend relationship. We see with this aspect that Robert is viewed negatively before the narrator even meets Robert but after meeting him the narrator changes his prejudice views about Robert. During the entire story, we are only given the name of the blind man, Robert. This is unusual because in most stories the characters and names are given out to allow the reader to connect with them more. However, on further
Some readers might think that he is a good guy just because of the way the narrator doesn’t trust him. Other readers could agree with the narrator’s point of view which is throughout his relationship with his wife, Robert has always been a main key in her life, lurking in the background. One could think that Robert could be planning on trying to seduce the wife. But instantly after meeting Robert, he says, “this blind man was late forties, a heavy-set, balding man with stooped shoulders, as if he carried a great weight there” which makes the readers feel his grief even though the narrator seems almost oblivious. Robert’s wife has recently died, and we learn that although her is there in person, talking about his life, he seems as if he is not really present. The narrator was naïve to be thinking that Robert was clearly not a threat and that his wife and him are clearly friends. Once he realizes that the narrator opens up to Robert, and is motivated to show his wife he loves her by being nice to her friend. He also sees an opportunity to learn about his assumptions of blind people. In the beginning of the story, the narrator voices that his “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. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.” But while watching, and hearing the way Robert did things changed the way