The idea of an internal journey is a characters emotional change, which has to do with the change in the thoughts, beliefs and behaviors of the character. The narrator in the story seems to wonder why he cannot understand his wife’s admiration for the blind man. With this we can say the narrator has a very low self- esteem about himself. Perhaps, he finds no value in himself; he is “blind” having no insights about himself and as well as the world around him. The narrators side of view about "the blind" creates the dramatic tension due to his lack of understanding, which at the end of the story everything got resolved when they exchanged knowledge. Robert and the writer joined hands at that point to make out a cathedral to clear Roberts doubts …show more content…
In a way he was kind of a “blind” person at the beginning of the story, he was blinded by jealousy and fear to find out that the blind man and his wife share and intimate relationship. Once he got to know the real Robert, he opened up to him and realizes that his wife and and the blind man are nothing more than friends. The author makes it seem as if the narrator is not happy in his marriage, since jealousy doesn't show good sign of a healthy relationship. The narrator thinks his wife could be secretly in love with the blind man and, he thinks that because his wife usually writes about things that matters to her. We can also see that he definitely loves his wife, since at the end of the story he is nice to Robert in a gesture to please his wife, turning him into a friend in the end. As for the narrators wife Some of the traits observed in her are kindness, sincerity and openness. She gets friends easily, but they doesn't las long. This gives a clue why Robert’s friendship is so important to her, but she doesn’t realize that by her trying to make Robert feel comfortable, she is forgetting her husband’s needs, which makes him jealous and maybe
The close outside friendship between the narrator’s wife and Robert, the blind man, provokes the narrator’s insecurities. This friendship has lasted for ten long years. During those years, they have exchanged countless voice tapes wherein they both tell each other what has happened in their respective lives. Because of this, the narrator feels that his wife has told Robert more than Robert needs to know. The narrator laments, "she told him everything or so it seemed to me" (1054). The narrator’s fear is somehow confirmed when Robert arrives and says that he feels like they have already met (1055). The narrator is left wondering what his wife has disclosed. This murky situation leaves the narrator feeling insecure, especially when he sees the warm interaction between his wife and Robert.
“Cathedral” consists of three individuals. The narrator is the main character, which the story revolves around. The wife of the narrator is the second character, who is the least relevant. The third character is the blind man, named Robert, who is a friend of the wife.
She was unhappy with her life and tried to commit suicide by swallowing pills. She would keep in touch with the blind man by sending him tapes and the suicide attempt was one of them. He has a jealous tone towards this, he says, “She told him everything, or so it seemed to me” (201). He recalls the time his wife asked him to listen to the latest tape a year ago before this time. He didn’t seem happy to hear his name from the blind man as he said “I heard my own name in the mouth of this stranger” (201). A knock on the door interrupts the couple from the tape, he suggests taking the narrator bowling. She reminds him that his wife, Beulah had just died, he replies by saying “Was his wife Negro?”(202). The narrator’s wife tells him about the blind man’s wife how she was the blind man’s reader after the narrator’s wife stopped working for him, and they eventually got married. After eight years, however, Beulah died from cancer. He felt sorry for Robert for a bit, but then thought about how awful it must have been for Beulah to know that her husband could never even know what she looked like. After staring at Robert’s face analyzing what he
The narrator's insensitivity reveals itself early in the story when his wife's blind friend, Robert, comes for a visit after the death of his wife. Almost immediately in the beginning of the story the narrator admits "A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to." [Carver 2368] He even goes so far as to suggest to his wife that he take the man bowling. He hears the story of Robert's dead wife and can not even imagine " what a pitiful life this woman must have led." [Carver 2370] The narrator is superficial, only recognizing the external part of people and not recognizing the value of a person on the inside.
The development of a fictional character is presented through an internal or an omniscient narrator. An internal narrator is a character within the work telling the story to the reader; internal narrators are usually first person narrators. A first person narrator is an internal narrator who consistently refers to himself or herself using the first-person pronoun “I”. For instance, in “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the narrator, also known as the protagonist of the story is illustrated through a first person narrator. The first person narrator helps to experience what the narrator is going through and allows the readers to witness how it is possible for someone to end with such prejudice conclusions like thinking “dark glasses [is] a must for the blind” (4). He also allows an access into the narrators mind; the judgmental and doubtful tone gives emphasis on his expectations about the blind man, which provides a clear picture into the feelings, attitudes, and isolation of the narrator. The narrator provides interior monologues, which help us follow his stream of consciousness. Through the emphasis of the description of Robert and his wife who is now deceased, he reveals his jealously as he
Adding to the obvious structural references to cathedrals and religion, the language and character actions present further evidence of an epiphany of divine proportions. The television program which the characters watch together deals entirely with cathedrals. This spurs the first real conversation between the narrator and the blind man. This presents religion as some form of common ground, on which one could stand, even without sight. When first asked by Robert, the blind man, if he was "in any way religious," the narrator asserts that he is not, and goes on to explain how cathedrals and religion "don’t mean any...
Robert Lebrun is a casual character with ideas that are contrary to those of other young men. Every person has heard of the teenager or young man who has had an affair with someone, however, Robert never has the intention (initially) of persuading Edna away from her man. Robert is a respectable young man who attends to one woman every summer. The story states, “Since the age of fifteen, which was eleven years before, Robert each summer at Green Isle had constituted himself the devoted attendant of some fair dame or damsel” (10). This quote is extremely significant. He looks after ladies summer after summer, tending to their every need. According to the Creoles, there is nothing wrong with it, yet on page nineteen, Madame Ratignolle asks Robert to do something uncharacteristically different. “‘Do me a favor Robert’… ‘I only ask for once, leave Mrs. Pontellier alone.’” Robert says he does not see a problem with tending to Edna, he does not think that she will take him seriously. In a way, this quote also provides the reader with a bit of foreshadowing. He does not leave her alone in the beginning, and they are together in the end, until Edna finds “true freedom” in death. Robert’s maturity is another notable characteristic. When he realizes Edna is falling in love, he leaves. He does not want to be an interruption in a married relationship. Yes, he admits he loves her through the actions he does. He also
He didn’t like the fact that his wife had a new friend that was going to stay with them and he felt threatened by their closeness. He selfishly says, “ I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me” (Cathedral 86). He clearly didn’t have compassion for that fact that Robert was disabled and that his wife had just died. All he cared about was his own feelings and his own relationship with his wife. He also had the nerve to go on and say, “ My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Some times they were led by Seeing Eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (Cathedral 86). He was clearly uninformed and biases when it came to people with disabilities or people that were different from him. He didn’t look at the situation as an opportunity to get to see something different and learn but to complain for pretty much the entire short
The audience knows this because the passage says, “I got up from the sofa with my drink and went to the window to have a look. I saw my wife laughing as she parked the car. I saw her get out of the car and shut the door. She was still wearing a smile. Just amazing.” Because the narrator is obviosuly unable to see his wife in any other than the most basic form of the word “wife,” one can see he is blind to human relationship (Henningfield). Another ironic part of this story is the idea that the speaker has all of the necessities that one needs to be happy and the blind man has nothing. Although the blind man lost his wife and sight, he still has a better perception of life and how to enjoy it with a positive attitude. The narrator originally has a pessimistic outlook towards humanity which eventually does change by the end of the piece with the help of Robert. Once again, this is ironic because the blind man “sees” life in a more positive way than the narrator, even with the loss of his sight. All in all, the irony in this story contributes greatly to the author’s style and character
This theme goes hand in hand with the theme portrayed in Hills Like White Elephants. In the story the narrator, whose name is never mentioned, has something against his wife’s blind friend, Robert, due to the fact that he cannot see. Robert visits the narrator and the narrator’s wife for company. It seems that the narrator had a preconceived idea that all blind people are boring, depressed, stupid, and are barely even human at all based on the fact that they cannot see the world. Robert, although he is blind, is a caring and outgoing person who is extremely close with the narrator’s wife. The fact that Robert is extremely close with the narrator’s wife should be reason enough for the narrator to accept him as a person, but he is a cold and shallow person with no friends. His relationship with his wife is lacking good communication and seems very bland. Robert’s wife recently passed away, but their relationship was deep and they were truly in love with each other. The narrator was blind to how a woman could work with, sleep with, be intimate with, and marry Robert as has he talks about how he felt sorry for her. The narrator is superficial and does not understand true love or
The narrator decides to have a conversation with his wife about the impending visit, and she asks him to try to make the blind man comfortable. She says she'd do her best to try to make any of his friends comfortable. When the narrator points out that he doesn't have any blind friends, his wife points out that he doesn't have any friends, period. She reminds him that the blind man's wife Buelah has just died, and tells him a little about her. The narrator asks his wife if the blind man's wife was a "Negro," to which she responds to by asking if he's crazy - or drunk. The man's wife Beulah, she explains, was a reader for Robert the summer after she was, before the two of them got married.
Many people view blindness as a disability, but could these people be blind to their surroundings? Even though the narrator can perfectly see with his eyes, he lacks in understanding awareness. The narrator blindness isn 't physical, like many vision impaired people. His blindness is psychological, and his blindness causes him to become jealous. His blindness blocks his perception of viewing the world in a different way. This only causes him to see the physical attributes of humans, and thus shut off his mindfulness of viewing human personalities. As a result of a closed mind, the narrator doesn 't understand how Robert was able to live with the fact that he was never able to see his wife in the flesh, but the narrator fails to see that Robert vision of his wife was intimate. On the other hand, Robert blindness is physical. This causes Robert to experience the world in a unique manner. Without Robert eyesight, he is able to have a glimpse of a human personality. He uses his disability to paint pictures in his head to experience the world. By putting his psychological blindness aside, the narrator is able to bond with Robert, and he grasps the understanding of opening his eyes for the first time, and this forms a new beginning of a
...d the blind experience and it was like Robert was no longer the blind person in the house (Caldwell 3). As a result, this shows him the way to gaining a better understanding of his own self worth and heal from pass hurts by experiencing the transcendent of nature of life.
Fiction enables us to gain a different insight into how we view the world around us and develop our sense of who we are in the world. Now banned in Vietnam because of its political views, Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Huong is the first Vietnamese novel published in America about Vietnamese women fighting to survive in a society where compliance to men and Communist corruption suppresses any kind of independence. The Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta is a novel that tells the story about a Nigerian girl who rebels against traditional marriage customs and the influence of Nigeria's European colonisers. Both texts explore the negative effects on an individual's identity and relationships in a society with traditional customs and values, influenced
He is also seen to have a constant negative attitude towards his wife and also perceive other people through prejudices, bias, and jealousies. The husband is seen to describe the life of Robert’s wife as being pathetic as a result of the jealous he develops on the relationship of the two.