The Allegory Of The Cave In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato addresses a shortsighted way of life through prisoners trapped in a cave, with false images that are believed to be reality. But when one individual leaves the cave, he discovers a vast world beyond and gains a new understanding of life that was previously foreign to him. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave highlights the myopic lifestyle that humans lead, focusing their life on the shadows on the wall. An example of this can be seen in Raymond Carver’s Cathedral, where a narrator describes his first encounter with a blind man and his initial narrow minded view toward him. When looking at the narrator’s shortsightedness, one can ironically see that he expands his horizons and gains a new understanding by closing

With distorted views of blindness, it creates a narrow minded way of thinking that limits his ability to see the picture as a whole and in a way makes the narrator blind. This can be seen when the narrator mentions that “my idea of blindness came from the movies” (Carver 1), showing the fact that there was only a singular window that the man perceived his ideas through. An important part to note was that it was the only source that the narrator relied upon for this knowledge, and contributed to the development of the stereotype against the blind man in his home. Later in the text, a similar statement can be seen regarding his ignorance. When struggling to comprehend a blind life, the narrator expressed his disbelief in the difference found between him and the blind man, saying that “it was beyond my understanding”, further supporting his lack of insight on things outside his sphere of knowledge. Seeing this one can draw similarities between the move and the shadow on the wall. They both controlled the man’s definition of reality, and by not attempting to know more and simply accepting this fate, it essentially “chained” him to the wall and prevented him from leaving the cave of