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It is Sunday morning, and the noise of hundreds of people walking around the cathedral is heard around the square. The cathedral is magnificent, it rises around two hundred feet in the air with menacing gargoyles and marvelous stained glass windows. Cathedrals are mainly used as a divine symbol, but in Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral” he uses the cathedral to represent the relationship between the narrator and his wife. In his story Carver shows that the narrator is a very jealous and bitter person who, often, overlooks his marriage, and does not try to build a better relationship with his wife. Once the wife’s blind friend, Robert, comes to visit, he gives the narrator a new way to look at their marriage. This gives the narrator a chance to see inside himself, for the first time, to see what he has missed out on in the marriage.
The narrator is a very jealous man, and is not very happy that his wife’s blind friend is coming to visit, “[a] blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (Carver). This shows how shallow the narrator is. Even though this blind man is a very close friend to the narrator’s wife the narrator is too jealous. He does not even try to build a relationship with his wife’s friend, which is only a start in showing how dysfunctional the marriage is. Even though the narrator is supposed to love and try to get along with her friends he does not make the effort of even trying to accept her friend coming over for a short visit. To further show how the narrator’s relationship with his wife is strained they argue about her friend coming to stay with them, “[i]f you love me," she said, "you can do this for me. If you don't love me, okay. But if you had a friend, any friend, and the friend c...

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... who he truly is and what his wife means to him by drawing this church. He knows that he has treated his wife wrong and he has overlooked very many aspects of his life, but since Robert has helped him, the narrator can now truly see.
To conclude, Carver uses the narrator’s, metaphorical, blindness to describe how he overlooks so many different aspects of his life, most importantly his marriage. The narrator finally learns to disregard the physical aspects of his marriage and others appearances because there is always a deeper meaning. Carver uses Robert as a guide, even though he is blind, he can read people and uses his other senses to see them, how they truly want to be seen not just by physical appearances. Robert helps the narrator see the error of his ways, to save the couples’ marriage.

Works Cited

Raymond. "Cathedral". n.p., n.d., Web. 25 February 2014.

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