In Raymond Carver’s short story “The Viewfinder”, the homeowner went from being a curious individual into a sorrowful man. In the beginning of the story we can tell the man is curious about the man with no hands. This is shown in the text when, “I wanted to see how he would hold a cup.” However, by the end of the story the homeowner went from being curious to sorrowful and longing for his family. This is evident when, “‘It won’t work,” the man said. ‘They’re not coming back.’” The man with no hands says this because the homeowner is so sorrowful and desperate for his family to come back that it seems he’ll almost do anything. Finally if the man was not sorrowful and desperate for his family I don’t believe that he would have climbed the roof.
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.
Carver tells the story in first person of a narrator married to his wife. Problems occur when she wants a friend of hers, an old blind man, to visit for a while because his wife has died. The narrator's wife used to work for the blind man in Seattle when the couple was financial insecure and needed extra money. The setting here is important, because Seattle is associated with rain, and rain symbolically represents a cleansing or change. This alludes to the drastic change in the narrator in the end of the story. The wife and blind man kept in touch over the years by sending each other tape recordings of their voices which the narrator refers it to being his wife's "chief means or recreation" (pg 581).
In the story "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver, the main character, goes through a major personal transformation. At the beginning of the story, his opinions of others are filled with stereotypes, discrimination and prejudice. Through interaction with his wife's blind friend Robert, his attitude and outlook on life changes. Although at first he seemed afraid to associate with a blind man, Robert's outgoing personality left him with virtually no choice. During Robert's visit, he proved to be a normal man, and showed the speaker that by closing his eyes, he could open his mind.
The narrator in Raymond Carver’s "Cathedral" is not a particularly sensitive man. I might describe him as self-centered, superficial, and egotistical. And while his actions certainly speak to these points, it is his misunderstanding of the people and the relationships presented to him in this story which show most clearly his tragic flaw: while Robert is physically blind, it is the narrator who cannot clearly see the world around him.
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.
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.
Throughout the majority of the story Carver uses a variety of devices to portray the narrator negatively. One reason is that he lacks compassion. At the beginning of the story he says, "I wasn?t enthusiastic about his [the blind man?s] visit. He [the blind man] was no one I knew. And his [the blind man] being blind bothered me."
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.
The narrator makes his opinions clear from the very beginning. In the first paragraph of the story he states, “A blind man in my house was not something that I looked forward to” (Carver, 34). This opinion continues on throughout almost the entire story. The narrator has no logical reason to explain why the thought of a blind man in his home makes him so uncomfortable either. He states that he has formed his opinion from movies where blind people move very slowly and never laugh. This is the only evidence he uses to defend his opinion, which is a very weak argu...
In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, a blind man named Robert help Bub, a person unable to understand or place the feelings of others in front of his own , open his eyes and realize how to consider others feelings. In the story, Robert comes to to visit Bub’s wife after his wife passes away. Bub is not looking forward to his encounter with Robert. As the story progresses, Bub is forced to interact with Robert in ways that seem foreign to him. Bub’s difference interactions with Robert builds up to the both of them drawing a cathedral together, which leads to Bub being changed and him placing Roberts points of view ahead of his own. Bub believes the world revolves around himself and lacks the ability to consider others feeling ahead of his own,
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.
In Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," the husband's view of blind men is changed when he encounters his wife's long time friend, Robert. His narrow minded views and prejudice thoughts of one stereotype are altered by a single experience he has with Robert. The husband is changed when he thinks he personally sees the blind man's world. Somehow, the blind man breaks through all of the husband's jealousy, incompetence for discernment, and prejudgments in a single moment of understanding.
...d precise. But by the end of they story he is admiring the homeless man while comparing him to the pigeon and realizing that a person can still be happy with no structure in their lives. That the freedom to do whatever a person wants is what he so desperately craves. Additionally, there are numerous symbols of this theme through out the short story. For example, Jonathan’s job as a security guard is symbolism. His job is very strict, he just has to stay in the same spot and keep watch for hours at a time. This job does not have much variation and he does the same thing day after day. This represents that his like constiancey. But, at the end of the day he moves from his stop which he has never done and does not open the door for a client which has never happened. This symbolizes that he is breaking away from his old self and changing into a person with less struce.
The man's greatest deficiency, resulting in his death, is his inability to think about the long term consequences of present actions or fact. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert within the things of life but only in the things and not in the significance. London describes how the extreme cold does not make the man meditate upon mortality. More pertinently, the man does not notice that building a fire under a spruce tree may be dangerous. The plot in this story is one of a man trying to conquer the last frontier.
A Man who had no Eyes is a story that revolves around two blind men accidentally meeting who both lost their eyesight due to a chemical explosion at a work place. One of the men is a beggar and the other man; Mr. Parsons is a very successful insurance man. The story starts when the beggar stops Mr. Parsons while walking out of a fancy hotel, although, the beggar was not trying to beg money from Mr. Parsons, instead he was trying to sell him a lighter for one dollar, Mr. Parsons bought the lighter but instead of paying the beggar just 1 dollar, Mr. Parsons was a humble man and gave him two. But still that was not enough for the beggar, the beggar tried to reach for Mr. Parson pockets and get more money because he was a greedy man. Then the beggar continues by telling Mr. Parsons a story that lead to the beggar’s blindness, he was trying to escape from the “C-shop” when somebody pulled him back and trampled over him which led to his blindness, to try to get more money out of Mr. Parsons. This story led to Mr. Parsons realizing whom the man was, ...