Cathedral
By Raymond Carver
1981
The readings this week were very diverse and captivating, but the one that I chose was Cathedral by Raymond Carver. In his short story Cathedral, Raymond Carver provides a picture of a man who is self-absorbed and insensitive. The theme of the story is acceptance and self-discovery. The main character in the story doesn’t seem to realize that he is prejudice of the blind. The fact that his wife’s friend is blind bothers him. He has never known anyone blind and has preconceived ideas of how blind people behave, only by virtue of seeing them in movies. I believe that he also shows signs of jealousy of anyone from his wife’s past. The characterization of the main character and point of view are the literary elements I will use to demonstrate how they contribute to the theme.. As the story unfolds, we see the gradual change in the main character as he discovers that being blind is not as debilitating as he once believed.
The theme of self-discovery and acceptance of others is used to show how some people are so insensitive to others that they isolate and judge them before they understand the true nature of the person. The main character is totally self-absorbed; every past experience his wife has had is something that he would rather not think about. He is a self-insulated man with no friends, save his wife (Nesset, 1994). He wants to think of her as his wife and only his wife. He doesn’t want to know about the blind man or her first husband. However, he realizes in the end that once he opens up to the blind man he sees him as a person, rather than his handicap. Finally, he finds that he has much to learn from Robert, the blind man.
The use of characterization in this story is necessary in order to establish the main characters’ shortcomings. Raymond Carver does an excellent job giving us an intimate look at the man and his