Cathedral analysis

In Raymond Carver’s short story Cathedral, the narrator is forced to come to terms with the fact that just because you’re looking at something that’s in front of you doesn’t mean you’re truly seeing what it is. Despite what he may think at the beginning of the story, the narrator is not actually superior to Raymond because of his ability to see. The fact that he can see and that he takes being able to see for granted is what causes him to just look at what’s around him rather than seeing them for what they really are.
The narrator’s lack of depth when it comes to the understanding of his surroundings is clearly exemplified in his wife. He knows her superficially, not completely and thus is only looking at what he sees in front of him and not delving into who she is as a person. Not getting to really know his wife is something that sets the narrator apart from Raymond. Even though Raymond can’t see a thing, he still knows the narrator’s wife better than the narrator himself. This is because he takes the time to understand the world around him rather than just going through life as fast as he can and only enjoying the superficialities of his environment.
It’s Raymond’s blindness which eventually allows the narrator to see. The one thing that the narrator thought made him superior to Raymond, the ability to visualize what’s around him, is actually what’s made him inferior this entire time and only through experiencing the world as Raymond experiences it is he able to understand that there is much more to life than just looking at things from the outside. He realizes that in order to be able to sincerely appreciate his surroundings he needs to take more time to sit down and think about the things in front of him, even the ever...

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...rrator and his wife describe drinking as a hobby of theirs, Carter was in a league of his own when it came to drinking, which would eventually be what killed him. There was a brief period in which he had claimed to have given up writing for drinking, and the heavy drinking caused his health to deteriorate which lead to a premature death.
Carver’s style being described as “dirty realism,” meaning that he typically focused on lower or middle-class people for whom suffering was not uncommon. In Cathedral the narrator has not lived a harsh life, but both his wife and Robert have gone through many hardships throughout their own lives. It is Carver’s connection to this kind of rough lifestyle that allows him to write accurately about these kinds of people and in the case of Cathedral tell the story of a man who has been taught to see by a man who has never seen before.