Internal Conflict In Cathedral By Raymond Carver

In both short stories, “Cathedral” written by Raymond Carver and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” written by Flannery O’Connor, we encounter characters that have a limited perspective on life. We find that the unnamed narrator in “Cathedral” has a bias mindset towards the blind man, Robert before he even meets and gets to know him. While in “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the grandmother is ignorant of her surroundings while being oblivious to her own flaws. Both stories demonstrate the overcoming of blindness through prejudice and vanity to end up seeing something greater than themselves through the use of characterization, symbolism, and epiphanies. In “Cathedral,” the narrator’s wife invites her blind friend, Robert, to stay in their home

In Cathedral, the speaker at first is very uncomfortable with the idea of having a blind man stay at his house. He is a very shallow person, never gives much thought to anything, and he does not try to connect to his wife on a deeper level. At the end of the story, the blind man and the speaker are alone, and the blind man asks him what a cathedral looks like. The speaker says that he cannot describe it, that he does not believe in God, so a cathedral would not have much importance to him. The blind man then has the speaker draw what a cathedral looks like, and he placed his hand on top of the speaker’s while he drew.

From that moment, the narrator show his true side to me. It shows that he doesn’t not care about his wife feeling toward the blind man. After carefully reading “cathedral”, the narrator is jealous of the blind man relationship with his

Everyone likes different authors because every author has their own unique ways of writing. In reading the short stories “Cathedral” and “The Students Wife” written by Raymond Carver, readers notice some of the many similarities in his writing style. Carver is able to establish his style with the use of imagery and mood. Carver’s stories contain various forms of figurative language which add to his style.

Blindness applies as both a physical and mental ailment. Raymond Carver portrays this concept to readers with his short story, Cathedral. Told from the point of view of a nameless narrator, Cathedral tells a tale of healing mental blindness and, ultimately, curing one’s ignorance. As the nameless narrator encounters Robert, a blind friend of his wife, he changes from a man with a nearsighted mentality to an aware, empathetic human being. The traits, psyche, and point of view of the narrator of Raymond Carver’s Cathedral each drive the plot toward a theme of healing and transformation.

Literal blindness can be seen in “Cathedral” as Robert was introduced to the narrator. Although he was blind, Robert was a sympathetic man who was insightful. He also demonstrates wisdom and friendliness. This characterization is important, because ironically, the narrator himself was figuratively blind. His blindness was caused by ignorance, prejudice, and social awkwardness.

A cathedral is compared to the soul of a person: what someone allows to be seen on the outside may be very different from their deeper emotions and thoughts. Since the narrator has discovered the beauty of imagination within himself, he may learn to see past the outer appearance of his wife and attempt to understand and connect with

This is where the epiphany starts to arise. Throughout the whole story, the author, Raymond Carver, gave an organizational structure of how the narrator’s views on the blind changed as the fiction progressed. He first viewed them as helpless beings. But once he heard the man’s wife died he felt pity for the blind man would have never known what she had looked like.

In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” written in 1983, the author points out that empathy and perspective are the only way to truly experience profound emotion. The narrator is struggling is sucked into his own comfort zone, he drowns his dissatisfaction on life, marriage, and job in alcohol. A man of limited awareness breaks through his limitations by socializing with a blind man. Despite Roberts physical limitations, he is the one who saved narrator from himself and helped him to find the ones vies of the world.

Isolation of the human heart results in the inability to connect and take part in a greater existence, whereas blindness of the human eye gives way to the truth and tenderness of humanity found in the wonders of this world. In Raymond Carver’s short story, “Cathedral”, the nameless narrator seems to exhibit behavioral patterns of an addict, tending to detach himself from the plot and all relationships that he continually fails to confront throughout life. The central figure, who abhors the blind, is ignorant of his own constraints, which prevent him from recognizing the traces of transcendence in humanity that lies beyond the temptation of physical pleasure. Through the utilization of the communion model, by way of first-person narration, characterization, and extended metaphors, Carver reveals the main character’s journey of rapport, which is indicative of a human’s limited sight of truth and understanding, leading one to search outside the scope of curiosity for a more fulfilling life. One may begin to apprehend Carver’s true message throughout “Cathedral” by first considering the significant role that the first-person perspective of the main character plays in the basic plot scheme.

“His being blind bothered me” (Carver 1). In Raymond Carver’s short story Cathedral, Carver establishes an ignorant narrator, who is dependent on alcohol and fixated upon physical appearance; he juxtaposes the narrator to a blind man who sees with his heart rather than his eyes. Through indirect characterization, Carver contrasts the narcissistic narrator to the intuitive blind man while utilizing sight as a symbol of emotional understanding. He establishes the difference between looking and seeing to prove that sight is more than physical.

In the story, the narrator’s narrow mindset is challenged over and over again as Robert breaks most stereotypes that the narrator held. As these stereotypes are broken, the narrator begins to feel more comfortable with Robert, and sincerely tells him that he is “glad for the company”. This release from prejudice culminates in the cathedral drawing scene of the story, where the narrator finally lets go of his bias towards blind people. Once the narrator closes his eyes, he is seemingly equal to Robert, and he consequently begins to understand Robert’s perspective. His newfound empathy towards Robert demonstrates how he has lost his prejudice towards him.

With this, readers could sense that the narrator is jealous, grouchy, and angry that Robert’s presence affects the narrator’s wife because of the connection between both the wife and Robert. The author prepares readers for the enlightenment when Robert came for a visit and that is how cathedral came about. The narrator explains, “The TV showed this one cathedral” (110). In this scene, the narrator and Robert bonded about the appearance of the cathedral. Instantly, the narrator says to Robert, “Do you have any idea what a cathedral is?

Narrated in the first person, Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” is bound to unfold due to the thoughts and feelings of one of the main characters, the husband. Expectedly, the conflict revolves around him and the way he responds to the conflict leads

In his contemporary short story, “Cathedral,” Raymond Carver tells the story of an unnamed narrator, his wife, and an old friend, a blind man named Robert. Robert has come to visit the narrator’s wife, who is quite excited to see this man whom she hasn’t seen in ten years, yet the same can’t be said of the narrator who is noticeably and vocally uncomfortable about his visit. The story is told through the narrator’s first person point of view, showcasing his thoughts and the events that take place when Robert comes to visit. Carver highlights the theme of having the ability to see, but not truly seeing, through his use of colloquial language, and creation of relatable characters. “Cathedral” begins with the narrator informing the audience