Loneliness In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

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Name : JIANG linyi OUTLINE FOR ESSAY Opening statement : What Raymond Carver wants to tell us through his short story “Cathedral”? After you read it, you might have some thought depending different people and different angle. Thesis statement: Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral” expresses the feeling of loneliness and suggest us that this kind of feeling can be changed by opening one’s mind and empathizing with others. Organizational statement: The narrator’s loneliness were viewed by his indifference, anxiety, and routine. His indifference is changed by imagining himself to be the person in his situation; his anxiety is changed by opening his eye inside his mind to see the world that he is living; his routine is changed directly by blind man, the blind man’s life attitude affect him deeply. …show more content…

He closes his mind and doesn’t want to understand the others or the outside world, until he meets the blind man. Supporting evidence 1. “ ‘I don’t have any blind friends,’ I said. ‘You don’t have any friends,’ she said. ‘Period. Besides,’ she said,‘goddamn it, his wife’s just died! Don’t you understand that? The man’s lost his wife!’ ”(p40) 2. “Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one.” “Her name was Beulah. Beulah! That’s a name for a colored woman. ‘Was his wife a Negro?’ I asked. ‘Are you crazy?’ my wife said.” 3. “My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything. ‘It’s really something,’ I said”(p39) topic sentence 2 : He smokes and sleeps late as usual, he doesn’t care about what is cathedral or anything in the world because of his anxiety. However, the wise blind man get an ideal and helps him to open his eye inside his mind. Supporting evidence 1. “Every night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep.”

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