In the short stories by Carver “Cathedral”, we are introduced to three characters; narrator, narrator’s wife and Robert who is characterized by his blindness. The narrator’s wife was once an employee of Robert where their friendship blossomed. There is an understanding to a hint that they knew and understood each other’s deep secrets. One day Robert pays a visit to his old time friend where he gets to interact with the narrator.
Carver describes ‘looking’ with relation to the physical vision whereas ‘seeing’ is more of an insight level of engagement. Immediately Robert arrives at the narrator’s residence; where he notices that Robert is blind and therefore imagines that he is superior to him. The narrator believes that he possesses the ability to see everything, and hence, puts no significant efforts in knowing who his wife is. The narrator pities Roberts’s wife who had passed on, in the sense that the blind man never got an opportunity to look at the physical appearance of his wife, and therefore his wife could put on anything she wanted.
Robert is indeed involved in listening and therefore genuinely understands the narrator’s wife through the audio tapes which they would regularly send to each other. Robert takes the narrator through a session of drawing the cathedral where the narrator gains comprehension of his life and later on realizes there is much more knowledge to learn about oneself. Carver portrays the narrator as a jealous man who has no regard for blind people but later on, the narrator gains his vision from Robert. The narrator is insensitive, lacks compassion, narrow-minded and detaches himself from other individuals in the sense that their relationship is full of insecurities and jealousy.
References
Carver, R. (2015). Cathedral. New York City: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Carver, R. (2016). Cathedral. Random House: Random House.
