Building Cathedrals In the short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the narrator, Bub, is as metaphorically blind as his guest, Robert, is literally blind. Bub has many unwarranted misconceptions about life, blind people in particular. He also has many insecurities that prevent him from getting too close to people. Through his interaction with Robert, Bub is able to open his mind and let go of his self-doubt for a moment and see the world in a different light. The idea of having Robert as his guest makes Bub uncomfortable. He is stubbornly resistant to the notion of having this strange man in his home, doubly so given this particular man’s physical limitations and the shared history with Bub’s wife. Bub has a disjointed understanding …show more content…
of blind people and their capabilities; he views them as a caricature culminating from blind characters he’s seen in movies. Bub pictures Robert not as a whole person, but as a pathetic, helpless individual. This is why he is shocked when Robert is capable of doing the everyday things “normal” folks can do, such as eat or even get out of a car without assistance. Before Bub even meets Robert, he pities him, or at least the idea of a blind person. When Robert shows up and begins to defy his expectations Bub is forced to reconsider the preconceptions he had. Such is the case when they all sit down for dinner and Bub is surprised how well Robert can handle himself “I watched with admiration as he used his knife and fork on the meat” (Carver 460). This is when Bub begins to see Robert in a different light. His pity begins to wane and evolves to sympathy. Despite feeling sympathy for Robert, Bub is still uneasy due to his own jealousy and insecurities. Bub is envious that Robert seems to have such a close relationship with Bub’s wife. He is in utter disbelief that his wife let Robert touch her face and then wrote a poem about it “...he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose-even her neck!” (Carver 456). Bub is resentful that Robert and his wife have a type of intimacy that he does not seem to have with her. His feelings come to surface when he sees his wife and Robert laughing and talking at ease with one another. Clearly, Bub has insecure feelings about himself and his relationship with his wife. Therefore, he gets offended when his wife never mentions him in her talks with Robert. He is paranoid that she simply settled for him as mentioned in “Cathedral” the short film, when she says “I’m going to marry this new guy now that my divorce is final. He doesn’t have a great job but he’s steady. Besides, how often am I going to meet someone new anyway?” (Carver Cathedral). Seeing the two old friends together brings these uncertainties to fruition. When Bub’s wife falls asleep though, he is able to relax a bit more and get to know Robert better. It is almost as if his wife’s presence is holding him back. A combination of Robert’s enigmatic personality and Bub’s intoxication from alcohol and marijuana allow Bub to let his guard down. Robert and Bub begin to joke around and Bub has the realization that he is actually quite glad to have some companionship. Bub begins to view Robert more as of an equal instead of a pitiful disabled person. At this point Bub begins to release some of his insecurities and his sympathy for Robert leads him to want to help him. Bub, although insecure, begins to emerge from his comfort zone.
As Bub begins to describe the cathedrals on the television for Robert, he gets frustrated, feeling as if he is not doing enough. Here his self-doubt begins to resurface as he feels inadequate at yet another thing in his life. Robert, being the optimist, does not allow Bub to give up and instead encourages him. Encouragement from Robert seems to push Bub further out of his comfort zone. Bub’s misconceptions are now completely flipped as Robert is helping Bub with something Bub does not understand at all. It is as if Bub is the incapable one and Robert is his guide. By the time Bub and Robert are holding hands and drawing a picture together, Bub has released all his previous misconceptions and some of his insecurities. This is when Bub really begins to see the side of Robert that perhaps is why his wife loves him so much. Bub’s wife awakens to find a scene she cannot believe and a husband she hardly recognizes. Bub releases his final insecurities about the situation and closes his eyes becoming temporarily blind creating an epiphany for himself where his pity has fully evolved to empathy. Bub is seeing the world differently even though he is not seeing at all “My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.” (Carver
465). Throughout these short few hours, Bub has had a life-changing moment by letting go of misguided preconceptions, letting his guard down, and opening his mind to a whole new perspective. Initially he is uncomfortable with idea of Robert staying in his home. Bub’s jealousy and uncertainties make it hard for him to relax and enjoy the company. After some drinks and conversation though, Bub begins to appreciate Robert for the person he is instead of the idea he had in his head. By letting go of the mental blocks that are impeding his time with Robert and his life in general, Bub is able to have an amazing and freeing revelation.
This is proven through his epiphany during his portrayal of being blind. Although Bub is not physically blind, he has a shortage of observations. This shows that in many ways he is blinder than Robert. Robert is more open minded and willing to experience things, in contrast to Bub, who is narrow minded and has problems opening up his mind throughout the short story. Because the protagonist does not fully try to understand his wife, it makes him look like the blind person ironically though he can visually recognize her, proving that he does not truly know her inside and out.
The short story, “Cathedral,” by Raymond Carver, is about a blind man who changes the way the narrator views life by giving him some insight on how he sees things. The characters in this short story are constantly developing into better versions of themselves by sharing their insights with one another.
From the beginning of the story, and throughout most of it until the end, the narrator makes comments about his dislike for blind people. He is unwilling to meet Robert, his wife’s friend of 10 years because he can’t see. The narrator is so fixed on his physical handicap that it makes him unable to try and get to know Robert’s character at all. His
The significance of the final scene in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” is important because illustrates how people with a negative demeanor can develop into a person with a positive attitude towards others. In the story, Bub not only falsely assumes bad things about blind people, but also about others as well. For example, he assumes that Roberts wife is a “negro” woman because her name was Beulah. The things that Bub assumes about Robert and Beulah resemble Bub’s negative attitude and personality toward the blind man and Beulah. Towards the end of the story, as Bub and Robert were watching television, the show featured a particular Cathedral. Robert asked Bub to describe the Cathedral when Robert says, “I wish you’d do it. I’d like that. If you
...interracial relationships. However because of the way he acts when he hears about the two of them, it is obvious that he has led a sheltered life. But even after his entire life of not understanding what was going on in the world around him, one night with Robert enlightened him and changed his view on people and his surrounding environment.
The narrator in Raymond Carver’s "Cathedral" is not a particularly sensitive man. I might describe him as self-centered, superficial, and egotistical. And while his actions certainly speak to these points, it is his misunderstanding of the people and the relationships presented to him in this story which show most clearly his tragic flaw: while Robert is physically blind, it is the narrator who cannot clearly see the world around him.
“Cathedral,” a short story written by Raymond Carver, presents an intriguing story of an ignorant man 's lesson. During this story, Carver 's working class characters are crushed by broken marriages, financial issues, and fulfilling jobs, but they are frequently unable to understand or communicate their own sufferings. However, the main story consists of the narrator, known as “Bub,” facing an internal conflict about a blind man named Robert staying the night in his home. Regardless of the fact that this blind man is his wife 's long time friend, the narrator cannot find himself comfortable with such an idea because of his extreme prejudices. Although, despite the narrator’s conflict he finds himself connecting to Robert on a more personal
From the beginning of his tale, the husband is quite bland on the subject of love. This is present when he tells the part about his wife's first husband, even going as far as to say the man doesn't deserve to be named because "he was the childhood sweetheart, and what more does he want" (348). When he tells of Beulah, Robert's wife, and her tragic death, he shows no compassion in mocking her for marrying a blind man. He even asks if the woman was a "Negro" because of her name. His materialistic views shine through when he feels actually pity for her because she could "never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one" (349). His lack of compassion for the tale of the blind man's marriage tells the reader that maybe the husband himself doesn't believe in love. When he refers to his wife's first husband as "this man who'd first enjoyed her favors" and "shrugs" when he thinks his wife is disappointed in his actions, it informs the reader he may look at relationships, even his own, as more of a business deal than a devotion of love (348, 350). His wry humor is major indication of his sarcastic character. He even makes a crack to his wife about the blind man befo...
Blindness in Raymond Carver's Cathedral Blindness creates a world of obscurity only to be overcome with guidance from someone willing to become intimate with the blind. Equally true, the perceptions of blindness can only be overcome when the blind allow intimacy with the sighted. Raymond Carver, with his short story Cathedral, illustrates this point through the eyes of a man who will be spending an evening with a blind man, Robert, for the first time. Not only does this man not know Robert, but his being blind, "bothered" (Carver 98) him.
Bub felt and understand the meaning of cathedral after being in Robert's position.and that pushes him to understand allots of things around him,because he now knows what it means to too feel something rather than just visualizing it. and he admit it by saying “My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything.” because now he feel what is inside of hime self not what is around him.
The husband's view on the world at the start of the story was a narrow one that was based on his ignorance, which prevented him from gaining understanding. His long held misconceptions, especially about blindness, defined his expectations about things he did not understand. For instance, when the husband found out that Robert was coming to stay, he disliked the idea of someone who was blind, let alone someone who he didn't know, coming to visit and the husband's "idea of blindness came from the movies." He saw the blind people as people who "moved slowly and never laughed." This was not the limit of his ignorance as it was further displayed by his constant referral of Robert as "the blind man" and his assumption of Robert's deceased wife being a black person based solely on the name of Beulah. This assumption display his bigotry is not limited to Robert's blindness and that differences that he did not understan...
Want? -"(P721). By treating everyone generically and denying their importance, the narrator is trying to make himself seem more important in the lives of others. He simply calls his wife's first husband "the officer"(P720) or "the man"(P720). His refusal to even use his wife's name while narrating as well as constantly referring to Robert as the "the blind man"(P720) shows that he has decided to block out the importance of the people around him. He is even less considerate of Roberts wife, whom he refers to as "Beulah, Beulah"(P721). The narrator chooses not to see everyone around him as individuals, but as a whole group. A group he is scared to look at. The narrator's feelings toward Robert are...
The narrator also feels intimidated by his wife?s relationship with the blind man. When he is telling of her friendship with Robert h...
I believe that if it weren’t for Robert’s visit and presence, the narrator more than likely wouldn’t have had this kind of experience. Maybe, the narrator wouldn’t have changed his mind of thinking and feeling at that moment. Who knows if he did change for the long run, but maybe it was a much-needed moment that he was eager to have, for himself, for his relationship sake. To realize that there is much more to seeing then what he just sees in front of him, because Robert taught him that even though you have your vision, some can still be blind to
The husband in Raymond Carvers “Cathedral” wasn’t enthusiastic about his wife’s old friend, whom was a blind man coming over to spend the night with them. His wife had kept in touch with the blind man since she worked for him in Seattle years ago. He didn’t know the blind man; he only heard tapes and stories about him. The man being blind bothered him, “My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to. (Carver 137)” The husband doesn’t suspect his ideas of blind people to be anything else. The husband is already judging what the blind man will be like without even getting to actually know him. It seems he has judged too soon as his ideas of the blind man change and he gets a better understanding of not only the blind man, but his self as well.