Brent Carver

Short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver is about how the blind man, Robert, inspires the narrator, the husband of Robert’s friend, to really see the world despite being blind. "Cathedral" is narrated by a man whose wife has an old friend who is coming to visit from Seattle. The friend is blind and his wife has just passed away. The narrator identifies Robert's blindness as his defining characteristic. Though Robert is blind, he can perceive the world in ways the narrator cannot understand and…

starts drinking to remove himself from social situations. After the narrator sees Robert smoking, he changes his ideals about Robert and the blind in general. The narrator saw Robert “smoking his cigarette down to the nubbin and then lit another one” (Carver 93). The narrator’s views about the blind people have surpassed his…

Morally blind There are about three thousand cathedrals, and about 39 million blind people, around the world. That is about 39 million people that don’t get to see the beautiful walls and insides of cathedrals. In In Raymond Carver’s short story, “Cathedral,” an unnamed narrator suddenly faces his own preconceptions, jealousy and prejudices about blind people that in return makes him emotionally and morally blind himself. Without actually being blind, the narrator of the story judges and puts…

In the short story by Raymond Carver, known as “Cathedral,” the narrator is shown by Robert the blind man that he is blind figuratively as much as Robert who is literally blind. The story seeks to demonstrate how there are different aspects of blindness. The narrator shows his blindness to the world through his stereotypical ideas and assumptions before he truly meets Robert. “In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed” (76). “Sometimes they were led by seeing eye dogs” (76). The…

In the short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver the cathedral that the narrator draws with Robert, the blind man, represents true sight and the ability to see beyond the surface of things in order to see the true meaning that lies within. In the beginning, the narrator can see with his eyes well, but he has trouble understanding people’s thoughts and feelings. The narrator is even unable to understand the person who is supposed to be closes to him, his own wife, and is therefore unable to…

Raymond’s Carver is an American writer that wrote the short story, “Cathedral,” that uses a first person point of view narration in which the narrator fundamentally transforms and is enlightened with a self-realization. The story transitions in a change in the tone of the narrator as being sarcastic, judgmental, and insulting in which he experiences an epiphany and has a brighter perception. The story begins with the feeling of apprehension of the gathering of his wife’s friend Robert who is…

Those incapable of sight are often considered to be limited, less fortunate and lost. Raymond Carver’s short story, “Cathedral”, explains the wonders behind those who are blind and how they see more than anyone with sight. A blind man by the name of Robert strives to open the mind of a very arrogant, detached man that does not see what the world truly is. The narrator, given the nickname Bub, and Robert symbolize two parts of society and represent different ways of thinking. The cathedral used…

the way he sees things, because of what he watches or reads about them. When the narrator turns on the television, he apologizes but Robert pays him no mind, “Whatever you want to watch is okay. I’m always learning something. Learning never ends.” (Carver 39.). This immediately shows a difference between the narrator and Robert, and ultimately switches and brings the two together. As stated before, when faced with the task of verbally explaining the cathedral to Robert, the narrator is only able…

can see, but because they are blind they realize or “see” things that others do not. The narrator thinks this way about the blind man, Robert, through most of the story. Carver uses the narrator’s point of view, imagery, and tone to show the reader how the narrator is “the blind leading the blind.” One of the big things Carver uses to show that the narrator is “the blind leading the blind” is writing the story from the narrator’s point of view. At the beginning of the story the narrator talks…

Character Analysis (Cathedral) The “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver. The unnamed narrator who is also the husband undergoes an emotional change throughout the story. The narrator's wife used to work for a blind man called Robert whose wife sadly died of cancer, and he is coming to visit the narrator and his wife, but the narrator is not happy about the visit. All because in his shallow mind, he thinks blind people are dirty and miserable. Sadly, enough he got this feeling from what he has seen…