Cathedral by Raymond Carver Essay -- Papers Cathedral Raymond Carver E

Cathedral by Raymond stonecutterIn Raymond Carver?s ?Cathedral?, the conventional ideas often associated with blindness and sight are challenged. By juxtaposing his two male characters, Carver is adequate to(p) to effectively explore sight and its seemingly simplistic relationship with acquirement and knowledge. As well, he addresses the barriers imposed by the hu musical composition tendency to intrust on vision as the sole means of experiencing the world.At the reference of the story, the teller?s perception on blind people as individuals who ?moved slowly and never laughed? reflect not only his plainly also the views generally shared by society (720). The uneasiness experience by the narrator at the prospect of ?a blind homo in his house? is a representation of the prejudices and fears that we often face when exposed and compel to deal with strange and foreign things (720). Blindness seems especially abnormal to us because vision plays such a heavy role in our prev alent ?normal? lives not visual perception equates to not being fit to truly understand and experience the beauties of life. Just knowing that the blind public had a wife who he ?lived, worked, slept with?had sex?and then buried. All without having ever seen what the doomed woman looked like? baffles the narrator (722). ?It is beyond his understanding? how anyone can make up in such an incomplete existence and thus is much merited of his pity (722). As the story progresses the narrator finally meets the blind man who is introduced to him as Robert?before this, the speaker merely refers to Robert as ?the blind man?. The establishment of ?Robert? who ?didn?t use a cane and didn?t eat up dark glasses? surprised him?going against the conventions that he had always believed seeing this b... ..., only through his forced interaction with Robert and his blindness is he able to close his eye and open up his mind. This awakening reveals to him a cultivate of communication, expe rience and expression that cannot just be seen. In the end it is ironic that even though the narrator was attempting to teach Robert something it was the he who seemed to gain the almost from the experience. The blind man and their drawing of the Cathedral are able to give his previous conceptions of life and thus open a vast adjust of new possibilities. We are left wondering how much more the narrator learned about himself and about human communication than the blind man has learnt about cathedrals. BibliographyCarver, Raymond. Cathedral. The Norton IntroductionTo Literature. Jerome Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. Seventh Edition. New York WW Norton1998.