Hosting a stranger in your home is very challenging mostly when you feels like nobody but you deserve you wife attention. That is the struggle that the protagonist in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” have to go through. In this story, the first person narrator lacks a complete knowledge of the blind people and often give incomplete information and perception about them. The narrator is experiencing an internal conflict because of ignorance, jealousies and anger. A slight moment of epiphanies will be a turning point in the narrator life. The struggle present itself through the protagonist own internal ranting his ignorance and lack of insight and self-awareness. …show more content…
Being social awkward and not knowing how to entertain the new guest who he happened not to like for being blind. He ironically said to take the blind guy bowling, which make his wife angry and she replied by asking her husband to treat her friend nicely and make him feel comfortable. Robert is charismatic and caring and have always been a good friend to the narrator wife something that the protagonist has not been able to do and make no effort to understand his wife. Every comment he make to his wife as well as everything he does seem to annoy her. Which laid the narrator to be consumed by jealousies and bitterness .Robert visit clearly bother the narrator on several levels: by searching for his name in tape conversation between Robert and his wife reveal the level of insecurity about others opinion and his doubt. As Carver relates on page 300 of Cathedral, “on the last day in the office, the blind man asked if he could touch her face. She agreed to this. She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose even her neck!” This has a huge impact on the narrator. He view the touch as sexual and not platonic action. In his eye Robert is another rival just like his wife ex-husband who he never mention his name.” Why should he have a name? He was a childhood sweet heart, and what more does he want?”(Carver’s, 2013, …show more content…
That created more anger toward himself and feel less than a man. This is frustrating for a superman how is trying to show how great he is. A man without a disability. So his struggle to let his guest know that a normal person according to the narrator has his limit too. Robert talk the narrator to draw a cathedral. This is not something that the narrator would had expected from a blind man.He follow Robert direction but feels like what they are doing is crazy.” So I began, first I drew a box that look like a house. It could have been the house I lived in then I put a roof on it.At either end of the roof, I drew spires. Crazy” (Carver’s p.310). Robert continue to praise his work even though he cannot see what the narrator is drawing but can feel the deep impression Bub make on the paper. In reality the picture is not what is important, for the narrator to give up control and trust a stranger. He start sympathizing with the blind man and this shows the culmination of his struggles.” Sure you got it, Bub. I can tell .You didn’t think you could. But you can, can’t you? (Carver’s p.311). He’s anger and insecurity have disappeared. Robert encourage Bub to close his eye and keep drawing. The narrator did as he was told and note; “my eyes were still close. I was in my house. I knew that .But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.” And added “it really something”. (Carver’s
The idea of having Robert as his guest makes Bub uncomfortable. He is stubbornly resistant to the notion of having this strange man in his home, doubly so given this particular man’s physical limitations and the shared history with Bub’s wife. Bub has a disjointed understanding
This is proven through his epiphany during his portrayal of being blind. Although Bub is not physically blind, he has a shortage of observations. This shows that in many ways he is blinder than Robert. Robert is more open minded and willing to experience things, in contrast to Bub, who is narrow minded and has problems opening up his mind throughout the short story. Because the protagonist does not fully try to understand his wife, it makes him look like the blind person ironically though he can visually recognize her, proving that he does not truly know her inside and out.
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.
...interracial relationships. However because of the way he acts when he hears about the two of them, it is obvious that he has led a sheltered life. But even after his entire life of not understanding what was going on in the world around him, one night with Robert enlightened him and changed his view on people and his surrounding environment.
The narrator’s prejudice makes him emotionally blind. His inability to see past Robert’s disability stops him from seeing the reality of any relationship or person in the story. And while he admits some things are simply beyond his understanding, he is unaware he is so completely blind to the reality of the world.
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.
“Cathedral,” a short story written by Raymond Carver, presents an intriguing story of an ignorant man 's lesson. During this story, Carver 's working class characters are crushed by broken marriages, financial issues, and fulfilling jobs, but they are frequently unable to understand or communicate their own sufferings. However, the main story consists of the narrator, known as “Bub,” facing an internal conflict about a blind man named Robert staying the night in his home. Regardless of the fact that this blind man is his wife 's long time friend, the narrator cannot find himself comfortable with such an idea because of his extreme prejudices. Although, despite the narrator’s conflict he finds himself connecting to Robert on a more personal
The irony between Robert and the narrator is that even though Robert is blind, he pays attention to detail without the need of physical vision. Roberts’s relationship with the narrator’s wife is much deeper than what the narrator can understand. Robert takes the time to truly listen to her. “Over the years, she put all kinds of stuff on tapes and sent the tapes off lickety-split. [...] She told him everything, or so it seemed to me” (Carver 124). This demonstrates that the narrator is in fact somewhat jealous of how his wife confides in Robert, but still overlooks the fact that he doesn’t make the slightest effort to pay attention to her. Also the narrator is not precisely blind, but shows a lack of perception and sensitivity that, in many ways, makes him blinder than Robert. Therefore, he has difficulty understanding people’s views and feelings that lie beneath the surface.
Want? -"(P721). By treating everyone generically and denying their importance, the narrator is trying to make himself seem more important in the lives of others. He simply calls his wife's first husband "the officer"(P720) or "the man"(P720). His refusal to even use his wife's name while narrating as well as constantly referring to Robert as the "the blind man"(P720) shows that he has decided to block out the importance of the people around him. He is even less considerate of Roberts wife, whom he refers to as "Beulah, Beulah"(P721). The narrator chooses not to see everyone around him as individuals, but as a whole group. A group he is scared to look at. The narrator's feelings toward Robert are...
I believe that if it weren’t for Robert’s visit and presence, the narrator more than likely wouldn’t have had this kind of experience. Maybe, the narrator wouldn’t have changed his mind of thinking and feeling at that moment. Who knows if he did change for the long run, but maybe it was a much-needed moment that he was eager to have, for himself, for his relationship sake. To realize that there is much more to seeing then what he just sees in front of him, because Robert taught him that even though you have your vision, some can still be blind to
The narrator, his wife, and the blind man spend the evening talking, but eventually the wife falls asleep. The narrator is uncomfortable about being left alone with a blind man. There is something about cathedrals on TV and the blind man asks the narrator to describe what a cathedral looks like. The narrator only describes physical things and so the blind man decides that they should try drawing one instead. As they draw the blind man and the narrator connect and a transformation in the narrator?s character takes place.
Not only does the husband not know how to communicate with Robert, he does not how to act around him either. A good example of this, shown after dinner, is when all three of them go into the living room. This is how the husband portrays what happens when they first enter the room: "Robert and my wife sat on the sofa.
The husband in Raymond Carvers “Cathedral” wasn’t enthusiastic about his wife’s old friend, whom was a blind man coming over to spend the night with them. His wife had kept in touch with the blind man since she worked for him in Seattle years ago. He didn’t know the blind man; he only heard tapes and stories about him. The man being blind bothered him, “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. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to. (Carver 137)” The husband doesn’t suspect his ideas of blind people to be anything else. The husband is already judging what the blind man will be like without even getting to actually know him. It seems he has judged too soon as his ideas of the blind man change and he gets a better understanding of not only the blind man, but his self as well.
Robert continually contradicts the narrators ideas of what a blind man should be like in his opinion; having a beard, not having glasses, drinking, smoking, even how Robert ate. Despite this, the narrator doesn’t appear to be moved by these revelations; he acknowledges them, but no major shift occurs in his thinking. No apologetic behavior or thoughts ensued, nor did the narrator’s demeanor dramatically alter. The lack of an incredible shift or substantial turning point leaves the audience unfulfilled about the story and disinterested. After dinner with the three, drinking, and smoking marijuana, the TV is on, with the showing of a documentary featuring cathedrals, a symbolic historical fact about the construction of one of these structures is stated by Robert.
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...