Andrea Abbott, Blog 2, New Crit.- "Cathedral"

In the short story, “Cathedral,” by Raymond Carver, a blind man visits an old-time friend, whom used to work as his assistant. Over the years the couple exchanged tapes of themselves to each other, discussing vital occurrences from moving and divorces to the death of a loved one. Eventually, Robert (the blind man) comes to stay at her house where her recent husband reveals no enthusiasm and makes the situation into a dreadful one. As the plot unravels, the pre-judging and self-pitying husband realizes the actual joys of letting go of sight and listening to the heart within. Through a simple interaction, the ironic spouse develops the understanding that although Robert cannot see in a literal sense, he (the husband) remained the “blind” man.

Before the man arrived, the husband concluded the “pathetic” life he lived just because of stories he learned from his wife. After hearing about the death of Robert’s wife he “found [himself] thinking what a pitiful life this woman must have led… who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one.” Then, as the narrator’s wife left to pick her friend up at the depot, he blamed the man for making him wait at home. Everything about Robert made the husband cringe, and although he expresses it as self-pity and sorrow, he seemed almost jealous because of the intimate and influential relationship shared between the two. Previously, the wife wrote a poem and shared with her husband about the blind man touching her face, and “recalled his fingers and the way they had moved around over her.” In response the narrator did not “think much about the poem.” Later on, however, the green within his face rose to surface as the friends “talked of things that had happened to them [over the] past ten years.” Robert “waited in vain to hear [his] name on [his] wife’s sweet lips… but heard nothing of the sort. [Just] more talk of Robert.” Then, the husband stood up to turn the TV on, perhaps out of boredom, but maybe also to remind himself who the superior, un-jealous one in the room is—the one who can see.

As the story goes on, and the two men focus on the TV program, Robert asks the husband to explain what a cathedral looks like. With a loss of words, the man stumbles over himself in finding just the right description. Robert tells the man to draw a picture of the building with him, and as he places his hand on top of Robert’s finally words are unnecessary—the strokes, lines and figures explain it all. Then, the blind man said “close your eyes” and as he did he thought, “It was like nothing else in my life up to now.” Although the husband pitied Robert before, he now sat there with his eyes closed longer than necessary taking in the absolute peace of experiencing the world from a deeper and wider perspective, and “felt like he was inside nothing,”—because not even  the walls of his house could control his imagination and new understanding.

Carver used a problematic and resolution plot structure with various ironies, and created the narrator’s character to help us grow as readers. The short story confronted stereotypes and misinterpretations one might conclude, and in doing so we, like the husband, may not be so blind anymore.