Raymond Carver Cathedral Essay

When people chose whether to look or to see, they are choosing their way of interpreting things. By looking at something or someone you are interpreting them as for what it is, but to see takes a greater appreciation. In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, he exhibits the difference between looking at the physical aspect of a person or thing and seeing them with insight. Carver displays this through the characterization of the narrator and Robert, the irony in the narrator’s point of view on Robert’s marriage, and how the cathedral symbolizes the narrator change in seeing perception. Carver’s characterization of the narrator and Robert allows the reader to see two different people with different seeing perceptions. From the start the narrator comes on to the reader as being judgemental and shallow. The narrator looks at Robert as if he is better than him, because of his

When he’s asked by Robert to describe the cathedral, but only to be able to look at the building structure. He says “They're really big. They're massive. They Are built of stone. Marble to sometimes. In those olden days, when they build cathedrals. Men wanted to be close to god. In Those olden days, God was important part of everyone’s life.” The narrator is repeating himself because he is unable to look any further, but when Robert asks of him to draw one he has a different view of the cathedral. He tells him to close his eyes, and is able to go beyond what he first described with his eyes open. He now seeing things with insight and not just the physical aspect. Its opened his mind to the way Robert has been looking at things. By the end when the narrator say “But i had my eyes closed. I thought I’d keep them that way for a little longer. I thought its was something i ought to do.” This implies that he has change this ways of looking at thing and being too quick to judge without seeing people and things with greater