Raymond Carver S Cathedral Essay
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In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”, the conventional ideas often associated with blindness and sight are challenged. By juxtaposing his two male characters, Carver is able to effectively explore sight and its seemingly simplistic relationship with learning and knowledge. As well, he addresses the barriers imposed by the human tendency to rely on vision as the sole means of experiencing the world.
At the beginning of the story, the narrator’s perception on blind people as individuals who “moved slowly and never laughed” reflect not only his but also the views generally shared by society (720). The uneasiness experienced by the narrator at the prospect of “[a] blind man in [his] house” is a representation of the prejudices and fears that we often face when exposed and forced to deal with strange and foreign things (720). Blindness seems especially abnormal to us because vision plays such a heavy role in our everyday “normal” lives; not seeing equates to not being able to truly understand and experience the beauties of life. Just knowing that the blind man had a wife who he “lived, worked, slept [with]—had sex—and then bur[ied]. All without having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked like” baffles the narrator (722). “It [is] beyond [his] understanding” how anyone can exist in such an incomplete existence and thus is much deserved of his pity (722). As the story progresses the narrator finally meets the blind man who is introduced to him as Robert—before this, the speaker merely refers to Robert as “the blind man”. The establishment of “Robert” who “didn’t use a cane and didn’t ware dark glasses” surprised him—going against the conventions that he had always believed; seeing this begins the process of humanizing the blind man and the idea of blindness to the narrator (723). His preconceived notions of blindness gradually start to crumble as he spends more time with Robert and realizes how “normal” he is. As the night wears on the narrator challenges Robert’s blindness in all sorts of ways—drinking, smoking cigarettes dope, and turning on the TV—which leads to their drawing of the cathedral and the narrator’s “awakening.”
Carver develops the two main characters in his story to be completely contrasted to each other, in these characters not only does sight and blindness become conflicted with each other but also does the issue of knowledge. Carver uses the narrator to represent an individual who sees but cannot “see” and Robert as...
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