“Cathedral”
by Raymond Craver
Unsociable people often prejudge people, unaware that they might be totally
wrong, due to their lack of knowledge. In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”, the two main
characters illustrate this idea. The narrator initially views Robert, the blind man, as an
unhappy man. The narrator pities Robert for being blind. In fact, however, it is he who is
handicapped. The narrator’s ignorance causes him to form assumptions about people; as a
result, he is massively insecure, afraid of other individuals.
In the beginning of the story, the narrator is very ignorant and uncommunicative,
leading to a feeling of insecurity. Robert`s visit does not excite him because “his being
blind bothers [him].” To the narrator, “the blind moved slowly and never laughed.”
Adding to his discomfort, he hears that Robert touched his wife’s face, not realizing that
that is perfectly normal for blind people. Although the husband is an emotional man, he is
unwilling to allow his emotions to surface. This makes it difficult for him to connect to
his wife. The narrator is in constant friction with his wife, “hardly ever [going] to bed
[with her] at the same time. When his sleeping wife’s robe “[slips] away from her legs,
exposing a juicy thigh,” he quickly covers her legs again, but changes his mind after
“[glancing] at the blind man …[, and] flips the robe open again.” He is clearly sneering at
his wife. The husband’s inability to express himself emotionally prevents him from
having a loving relationship with his wife.
In the narrator’s quest to find happiness, he often drinks alcohol and smokes
marijuana. This is his way of escaping the wall of insecurities he has built around
himself. Robert, on the other hand, does not have this problem, often coming up with
clever remarks. He may be physically handicapped, but he is in a sense less handicapped
than the husband. In an attempt to tear down the wall the narrator has built around
himself, Robert tries to teach him how to attach to other people. He first engages in the
husband’s activities, smoking marijuana for the first time in his life. When the narrator
asks Robert if he wants to hit the sack, Robert decides to keep him company. The
husband is pleased by this and says “I’m glad for the company,” suddenly realizing that it
is not horrible to be with another guy and becoming more humane. While watching
together a television program on cathedrals, he asks Robert if he knows how a cathedral
looks like, dropping his mask and expressing his concern. Robert is making progress with
the narrator and continues to draw him out of his shell.
When the narrator does not succeed in depicting how a cathedral looks like,
Robert asks him to draw one for him, using heavy paper and a pen. After closing his hand
over the husband’s, the narrator starts drawing. This is completely unnecessary because
Robert could have run his hand over the indentations to understand the structure of a
cathedral, but instead he tries to make the husband feel comfortable with him. While the
narrator is drawing the cathedral, Robert tells him “Put some people in there now. What’s
a cathedral without people?” It is a pure symbol of what the narrator needs. Carver
cunningly chooses a cathedral because it represents many people with a shared ideology.
It is a shared experience, as opposed to a solitary experience. Robert finally breaks the ice
when he tells the narrator to keep on drawing with his eyes closed, with the intention to
show the husband how it is like to be blind. When he instructs the narrator to open his
eyes, he keeps them closed because “[he] thought it was something [he] ought to do.”
This is a sign of respect for Robert. The narrator empathizes with Robert and tries to
experience what the blind man is experiencing. Because he never had such an incident
before, he lacks the word to describe it and says “It’s really something.” The same man
who said “a blind man in my house was not something I looked forward too,” now really
admires Robert and empathizes with him.
In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” the narrator experiences an epiphany. While in
the beginning he is fearsome of other people due to his ignorance, he eventually learns
how to connect to other individuals and really enjoys the experience. In the story, the
narrator switches and back forth between calling Robert “the blind man”, or calling him
Robert, typically calling him Robert when he admires him. However, at the end of the
story, when the narrator experiences a kind of resurrection, he calls him “the blind man.”
Carver is realistic, not wanting to show a miraculous transformation, but rather
considering it as a step in the right direction.
