The Blind Man Raymond Carver Analysis

Carver develops the narrator’s tone chronologically from disdainful to cautious to introspective by deepening his relationship with Robert to express the false perception of strangers that assumptions can produce. In the beginning the narrator’s tone is derisive, as though he’s mocking Robert’s being blind. The narrator sees Robert as a nuisance, getting in the way of him and his wife, whose past relationships with Robert and other men seem to irritate the narrator. “Her officer – why should he have a name? he was the childhood sweetheart, and what more does he want? – came home from somewhere, found her, and called the ambulance,” (Carver 2). The narrator won’t give his wife’s ex-husband, which emits an angry or contempt feeling in the text.

“ ‘I feel like we’ve already met,’ he boomed. ‘Likewise,’ I said. I didn’t know what else to say. Then I said, ‘Welcome. I’ve heard a lot about you,’ ” (Carver 4). As soon as Robert walks in the door the narrator is at a loss for words and repeats himself, showing his nervousness around blind people. The narrator assumes the worst for Robert, seeing his wife’s relationship with Robert as creepy and unorthodox, which taints his perception of him before they even meet. The narrator’s tentativeness continues when he changes the television channel to something he thinks Robert might not like. “I wanted to watch something else. I turned to the other channels. But there was nothing on them, either. So I turned back to the first channel and apologized,” (Carver 9). The narrator apologizes for something as small as changing the channel, hoping that it didn’t offend or anger Robert, continuing the anxious ambience of the middle of the story. The narrator doesn’t know how to act around Robert because he’s never been around someone like him and the author of the story uses this event to show that Robert and the narrator are more alike than the narrator believes in the beginning. After this encounter between Robert and the narrator the feeling of the story changes and the narrator’s opinion of Robert begins to develop an experiential meaning, as opposed to his previous knowledge of blind