Loneliness In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

Accepting people for who they are without ever meeting them, is something that many find difficult at times to do. Usually after experiencing something significant with that person though, individuals are finally able to learn and grow from the shared experience. During the events of Raymond Carver’s ‘Cathedral’, the narrator goes from a lonely man, who is constantly insulting and belittling Robert, the blind man in the story, to learning how to get along with someone who is totally different from him. By using the interaction of the characters and drawing from his own life experiences, Carver is able to produce a story that shows how tolerance and understanding can be learned if people are willing to learn.

Individuals that experience loneliness

for extended periods of time, are usually the type of people who end up judging others without ever meeting them. This can usually stem from not knowing how to socialize correctly and becoming jealous over small things or fearing that a person may try to take something important from them.

In Carver’s life, this loneliness could have come from him moving and never settling in one place for a long time or from the failure of his first marriage (Caldwell). The narrator in ‘Cathedral’ somewhat embodies the loneliness that Carver may have experienced throughout his years because according to the narrator’s wife in the story, “[he doesn’t] have any friends.” (Carver 36) This statement clearly shows, that the narrator has only one person in his life, which is his wife, who he immediately shows jealously about when he remembers the story she told him about Robert touching her face for he could get a picture of what she looked like in his mind. This reaction from the narrator could have mirrored what Carver himself was thinking when his second wife had invited a blind man to their house. (Caldwell) Even

though the wife of Carver and the blind man may have not had such an ‘intimate’ moment in their past, the fear of maybe losing his second wife to someone who could not even see angered him in a way and he may have built a wall of unjustified resentment against the blind man. This unjustified resentment comes in to the story when the narrator begins to act in a passive aggressive nature against the thought of having Robert visit them because of what his wife had told him. It also instills the fear that she may leave him for Robert and makes him less acceptable of the man. As irrational as the fear is, he is lonely and therefore, does not want to lose the only person he has even if, that means being rude to the guest.
Because of his irrational fear and need to feel superior than Robert, when Robert is first introduced to the narrator, he constantly calls him the blind man and never actually refers to Robert by his real name. In a way, this probably makes him feel as if he is in control of the situation and by building up this wall between him and Robert, he cannot be hurt or offended. This also makes it seem as if the narrator is dehumanizing Robert and therefore trying to make it acceptable to treat him poorly. In the paragraph where he first meets Robert, he wishes the man was wearing glasses because it is ‘creepy’ and he feels as if Robert is looking into his soul even though man is blind (Carver 38). This ‘creepy’ feeling changes to ‘admiration’ though as dinner time rolls about and the narrator notices that the blind man is able to find everything on his plate even though he cannot see. Another incorporation of Carver’s life into this story, is when the narrator is seen to use alcohol numerous times in the story to relax himself around Robert. Carver, who also was an alcoholic once in his life, probably tried to use alcohol as a solution to not having to get to know the man sitting in his house. Since the use of alcohol is very prevalent throughout the dinner scene, it can be inferred that by using alcohol, that the narrator is trying to get in a state where maybe he is able to tolerate the man since he will be inebriated. Something that can be taken away from these two actions, even though they may seem small, is that the narrator in a way is trying to break his wall down even if he does not realize it. By admiring the blind man silently the narrator in a sense is being to not judge him as harshly as he did in the beginning.
Subsequently after they have dinner, the narrator finds him and Robert by themselves in the living room while the wife has fallen asleep.

A passage or so goes by with them drinking and having small talk and when the narrator changes the channel to a program showing a cathedral they begin a deeper conversation that ends up breaking the narrator’s wall down. Finding out that the blind man does not know what a cathedral looks like, the narrator tries to describe it to him but fails.(Carver 45) At this point, the narrator realizes that if he wants to show Robert what a cathedral looks like, then he has to be like Robert and use his sense of feel instead of sight. Afterwards, Robert tells the narrator to grab some paper and a pen and that by feeling what the narrator is drawing, he himself can see it in his mind’s eye. And that is what they do, in the end they draw a cathedral and the narrator says to himself, “it’s really something” (Carver 46).By drawing the cathedral with Robert and closing his eyes, he can now truly see beyond the superficial thoughts he had against the man and realizes that he is no longer trapped behind the wall he built up. Also by drawing a cathedral, which can symbolize a place to come together at, he is now not alone and is in a way connected to Robert. This entire scene in the book, is said to be identical to what happened to Carver himself and Jerry Carriveau the blind man who actually came to visit the family (Caldwell). By drawing with the

blind man, Carver himself was probably finally able to find his self after so many years of being lost and lonely. By simply experiencing the same event as Carriveau, Carver was able to let go of his prejudice against the man and gain and understanding about how even though they were different they could also be brought together.
Interacting with Robert wholeheartedly, causes the narrator to drop his prejudice of people who are different from him and in return causes him to be able to break the wall of prejudice he had built up against the man. By using something as simple as a picture of a cathedral and his own life experience to show how two people can be brought together, Carver shows that even if people think they are totally different, there is always something small that can bring them understanding of each other.