Blind

Cathedral by Raymond Carver was about much more than a married couple and a blind man.  As one of my favorite stories read so far this semester this story dealt with sight vs. insight.  Right away we are introduced to the narrator, who physically has the ability to see; yet after a few pages we notice is blind in so many ways.  He immediately draws stereotypes and conclusions about his wife’s blind friend, Robert, before he has even gotten to know him.  He assumes that Robert’s wife who has recently passed could have never been happy with Robert because he could never see her.  The narrator makes a snide remark that she could’ve worn whatever she wanted.  He does not even pay attention to his own wife nonetheless seem to know her.  He expects her to mention him while talking to Robert, which she never does understandably.  He is extremely distant from her, yet jealous of any other men in her life.   He immediately assumes he is superior to the blind man because he can physically see, yet he has no actual insight until the end of the story. 

There are many times in our own lives where we choose not to look deeper into something, or we immediately make assumptions without solid grounds.  We may also assume superiority over someone simply because of a preconceived notion.  For example, we may look at a homeless person and assume that they are inferior because they have no money or place to go, but they may have much more wisdom than we ever could, and we may not ever take the chance to learn from them –because they’re homeless.

The narrator learns to see Robert’s world at the end of the story.  His wife falls asleep giving him no option but to talk to Robert, who he begins to describe what things on the TV look like to.  He is unable to describe a cathedral to Robert, but when Robert asks him to draw it with him, the narrator sees much more than the cathedral.  He has an epiphany in which his “blindness” is lifted.

Raymond Carver’s choice to tell the story in first person from the husband’s point of view really made it easy to understand him.  We can see first hand how shallow and idiotic he is with our channel directly into his mind, and we also have a more intimate understanding of his epiphany in the end.  If Carver had decided to tell the story from a different point of view I do not think it would have nearly the same effect.

It is my fear that there are plenty of people like the narrator around; in fact I dated one fairly recently. But I know there are not nearly enough people like Robert.  So few people are willing to look below surface level and discover the rest of the iceberg, and I hope that this will change.