the cathedral

430 Words1 Page

At a glance Carver’s writing style of the “Cathedral” seems simple but after further interpretation of the story one realizes that the “Cathedral” is about the interactions and epiphanies that regular people have that changes their entire life. This idea is perfectly represented at the end of the “Cathedral”, throughout the story the husband knew nothing about blind people and wondered how can they live their life without being able to see. He continually made references to the effect of how can he be married and not be able to see his wife, if she had makeup purple slacks and so on he would never know. At the end of the story the husband became closer to the blind man through the drawing exercise and when he asked him to close his eyes so the husband was able to “see” things as the blind man saw them he realized that being blind wasn’t that bad it was just a different type of life style. Because Carver writes about simple commonplace situations this makes the story more affective to the average person. Topics such as loss and drug and alcohol use are things that almost everyone can relate to because it affects almost everyone’s life in one facet or another. Because this is the concentration of Carvers story it allows more people enjoy and relate to the stories; this also leaves the story for more personal interpretation. Each person has their own thoughts about drugs, alcohol and loss and because of these feeling the interpretation of the story is left up to the reader.

The husband was amazed at the blind mans ability to smoke a cigarette and eat food as well as he was able to. These are all commonplace objects and task that many people would believe that the blind would have trouble with, but this stereotype was quickly done away with once they began to eat and smoke.

Carver is defiantly an optimist, he believes in the ability for people to change and be more acceptable of people that are different, and disabled.

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