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Theme in cathedral by raymond carver
Theme in cathedral by raymond carver
Theme in cathedral by raymond carver
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In Cathedral, Raymond Carver shares his characters’ relationships and their inability to understand the significance of their own relationships. The narrator and the blind man known as “Robert” are the two main characters in the story. Carver’s “Cathedral” is narrated by the main character who is ignorant, self-centered and unaware. Robert the blind man, on the other hand, is insightful and understands life. Ironically, he is blind but has a right perspective and is not ignorant. Both characters have feelings for the narrator’s wife. Robert and the narrator have relationship issues, but they both have different ways to solve the problem. The narrator is uncomfortable with Robert spending the night at his house, whereas when Robert met him, …show more content…
he pleasantly said “I feel like we’ve already met” (4). Although the narrator loves his wife, he has an arrogant and ignorant personality and only judges people based on their physical attributes; however, Robert is the exact opposite of the narrator and loves the narrator’s wife based on her inner beauty. The story opens with the narrator’s wife telling him that her friend who is blind will be staying at their house for the night.
To this the narrator said “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit […] And his being blind bothered me” (1). This shows the narrator’s ignorance and self-centered character. He was uncomfortable with Robert being blind just because he has never known anyone who was blind. He thought anyone who is blind leads a dull and miserable life. Later in the story when his wife tells him about Beulah Robert’s wife, his first question is “Was his wife a Negro” (3). The tone used by the narrator reveals his racist character. After learning more about Beulah, he felt sorry for Robert because he could not see what his wife looked like. He also mentioned that Beulah could have worn anything she wanted because her husband could not see and compliment her. The narrator, with his words, expresses that he only cares about physical characteristics and is not familiar with the inner beauty a person could entail. When the narrator’s wife is leading Robert in the house, she has a beautiful smile on her face. She enjoys the company of Robert and is jubilant with him. Even when the narrator acted awkwardly and asked disrespectful questions because of his ignorance, Robert replied politely and called him “Bub” as a sign of friendship. This shows Robert’s warm and lively …show more content…
personality. Both of them have feelings for the narrator’s wife.
Throughout the story, the narrator repeats the phrase “my wife” which shows that he still loves her even though they sleep in different bedrooms. He is physically attracted to his wife but is unaware of her emotional needs. Whereas Robert’s affection for the narrator’s wife is shown through the way he touched her face when she used to work for him as a reader. He kept in touch with her and exchanged audio tapes. He listened to her and had established a good relationship with her over the years. The narrator is jealous and feels insecure when he notices that his wife cannot take her eyes off of Robert. Both Robert and the narrator love her in very different
ways. Robert had been separated from his wife because of her death from cancer. He dealt with it boldly. He did not isolate himself from people and had conversations with people as a ham radio operator. He also maintained a close relationship with the narrator’s wife via audio tapes. The narrator has been absent from his wife’s life and has isolated himself. He is not aware of her emotional needs and that is the reason they both do not share a bedroom. In the beginning of the story when Robert arrives there are a lot of negative feelings towards him, but eventually the narrator learns that he and Robert are not so different after all. Even though Robert and the narrator are very different people in aspect of perception, they both love the narrator’s wife. When Robert and the narrator draw the cathedral together, this helps the narrator realize the importance of the inner beauty of a person. Through the experience of drawing the cathedral with his eyes closed, the narrator’s perspective has changed and he felt the same way the blind man felt. He no longer had pity for Robert.
In Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," the husband's view of blind men is changed when he encounters his wife's long time friend, Robert. His narrow minded views and prejudice thoughts of one stereotype are altered by a single experience he has with Robert. The husband is changed when he thinks he personally sees the blind man's world. Somehow, the blind man breaks through all of the husband's jealousy, incompetence for discernment, and prejudgments in a single moment of understanding.
This story is about how the narrator is unable to see what life is really giving him and finds it through a blind man’s eyes, the friend of his wife. Cathedral is a touching story, in my opinion, as it reflects on what many of us, society, take for granted. It shows how important it is to give people a chance and to be able to see the true meaning of what surrounds us even if it is not important to our personal life. Throughout the short story, Carver uses several figurative language to expose the theme of the story.
The irony between Robert and the narrator is that even though Robert is blind, he pays attention to detail without the need of physical vision. Roberts’s relationship with the narrator’s wife is much deeper than what the narrator can understand. Robert takes the time to truly listen to her. “Over the years, she put all kinds of stuff on tapes and sent the tapes off lickety-split. [...] She told him everything, or so it seemed to me” (Carver 124). This demonstrates that the narrator is in fact somewhat jealous of how his wife confides in Robert, but still overlooks the fact that he doesn’t make the slightest effort to pay attention to her. Also the narrator is not precisely blind, but shows a lack of perception and sensitivity that, in many ways, makes him blinder than Robert. Therefore, he has difficulty understanding people’s views and feelings that lie beneath the surface.
The narrator also feels intimidated by his wife?s relationship with the blind man. When he is telling of her friendship with Robert h...
In Cathedral, the narrator seems to be blinder than Robert, who is actually blind. While Carver was in his 20’s, after he got married at age 19, he began to become blind to all that was in front of him and started drinking. When he wrote Cathedral, the narrator is
At first, the husband has an attitude that he doesn’t care about this blind man that’s friends with his wife. Then it almost seems like his uncaring attitude turns into somewhat of a jealousy about the blind man as his wife is always talking about him, and showing her husband the tapes they recorded that got sent back and forth to one another. When the husband and wife were talking to each other about the blind man’s life, the husband responds to his wife with now an almost jealous attitude. The blind man lost his wife as she had just passed away, and he talks about her name Beulah thinking, “Beulah’s a good name for a colored woman. (Carver 139)” He then asks his wife “Was his wife Negro? (Carver 139)” His wife started getting upset as he didn’t seem to care or try to understand and asked, “Are you crazy? (Carver 139)” She went on to e...
When I read “Cathedral” a short story by Raymond Carver, it leaves me with many questions as well as lessons. This story mainly encounters behaviors and discussions between the three main characters. The three main characters of the story are the unnamed narrator, his wife and the Robert. The unnamed narrator is kind of the main character who describes his experience with Robert. He is jealous of his wife’s past and doesn’t want Robert to visit them. Robert is a blind man who is an old friend of narrator’s wife. Narrator’s wife is an unnamed woman who invited Robert to her home after a long period of time. The short story mostly revolves around these three characters and their discussions.
In “Cathedral”, by Raymond Carver, there is a big issue with the idea of acceptance of people who are different. In this story this idea of acceptance of those who are different focuses on the aspect of a disability, specifically blindness. Throughout the story Carver explores this idea through a theme focusing on the difference and relationship between the blind man, Robert, and the narrator. In the beginning Carver starts off with an acceptance and a misunderstanding of this difference between Robert and the narrator. Yet towards the end, the narrator experiences a change in him that allows him to see what he misunderstood and dint exactly accept and now he has the ability to understand and embrace Robert as a real human being,
This is evident within the trust issues that the narrator overcame during the story. The narrator tells readers about a poem his wife wrote where she describes the experience of Robert touching her nose and lips. Furthermore, the narrator states that he didn’t think much of the poem. This shows that the narrator is in essence, jealous of Robert’s interaction with her, as Robert was able to connect to her in a way that the narrator failed to comprehend initially. In drawing the cathedral, the narrator could finally understand the knowledge that his wife had attained many years before him and understood what it was that had drawn his wife to the blind man, thus removing any insecurities he may have had. In addition, the narrator’s wife also opened the narrator’s mind through her demonstration of trust. The narrator’s wife says to the narrator, “If you love me, you can do this for me. If you don't love me, okay. But if you had a friend, any friend, and the friend came to visit, I'd make him feel comfortable" (carver, 3). In expressing this statement, the narrator’s wife shows that she does indeed love the narrator and is trying to prove this to him. It also demonstrates that the narrator himself is being reluctant in allowing the blind man into his home due to a lack of trust towards his wife. As Robert turns out to be an exceptional character to the narrator, he inevitably learns to trust his
The narrator’s wife has an old friend that’s his wife that has just died and so has him come visit her. From the beginning of the story, we see the narrator’s personality comes off very strong against not wanting his wife’s blind friend Robert to come to his house to visit. The narrator tells his wife that he isn’t happy about this visitor and that the man’s blindness unsettles him. The narrator seems very jealous of the fact that someone besides him is going to be taking his wife
In Raymond Carver’s short story, “Cathedral” the narrator is revealed to be a self-centered and egotistical man with the inability to see events and people from any point of view other than his own. About midway through the story I was completely aware of his lack of respect and consideration for other people and their views that differ from his. It was made even more apparent by his opinions towards his wife’s old friend, Robert, A blind man whom she had met & befriended 10 years ago. Despite the narrators close-minded views the narrator eventually has an epiphany that changes his views of not of not only Robert, but his entire outlook on every aspect of his life up to that point. Finally, I can pinpoint and properly explain my thought process
It is known from the very first sentence of the story “This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night.” (455) the narrator is not enthused about the strangers visit, he even established that it is not a friend of his, but his wife’s. The tone of the narrator automatically expresses that he is a narrow minded character who cannot see more than what is displayed at the surface. …. The narrator also adopts a insecure tone when faced with the obvious intimacy between the narrator’s wife and the blind man. He feels threatened and becomes extremely insecure in his
Upon reading “The Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the reader can immediately notice various literary elements he uses to show the shift from sight to insight in the narrator using symbolism, motifs, and theme. Carver illustrates the narrator as a somewhat racist, close-minded man towards the beginning of the story, but then evolves the character with the literary elements previously stated.
The story “Cathedral,” by Raymond Carver is a story of two men, whose ability to see things were completely different from one another, but something had united them at the end of the story which is why it is so fascinating. The narrator, who doesn’t have the name, is confronted by a visitor in his house when his wife invites a blind man, named Robert, to come over to their house. The narrator assumes that he’s superior to Robert when he arrives. Why not? He was able to see things physically but Robert wasn’t. Robert, however, has an ability to see things at a deeper level. He may be physically blind, but later on, it turn out to be that the narrator was the one who is actually blind. The Cathedral is drawn by the narrator and Robert, and it
A passage or so goes by with them drinking and having small talk and when the narrator changes the channel to a program showing a cathedral they begin a deeper conversation that ends up breaking the narrator’s wall down. Finding out that the blind man does not know what a cathedral looks like, the narrator tries to describe it to him but fails.(Carver 45) At this point, the narrator realizes that if he wants to show Robert what a cathedral looks like, then he has to be like Robert and use his sense of feel instead of sight. Afterwards, Robert tells the narrator to grab some paper and a pen and that by feeling what the narrator is drawing, he himself can see it in his mind’s eye. And that is what they do, in the end they draw a cathedral and the narrator says to himself, “it’s really something” (Carver 46).By drawing the cathedral with Robert and closing his eyes, he can now truly see beyond the superficial thoughts he had against the man and realizes that he is no longer trapped behind the wall he built up. Also by drawing a cathedral, which can symbolize a place to come together at, he is now not alone and is in a way connected to Robert. This entire scene in the book, is said to be identical to what happened to Carver himself and Jerry Carriveau the blind man who actually came to visit the family (Caldwell). By drawing with the