...the use of symbols. Stories filled with symbols can turn readers into investigators; keeping an eye out for anything and everything that can have an implied meaning. Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck are masters at using symbolism to communicate to their readers. To no surprise these writers also use symbolism in the title of their stories. Three examples of this would be Raymond Carver’s story “Cathedral”, Ernest Hemingway’s story “Hills Like White Elephants”, and John Steinbeck’s story “The Chrysanthemums”. The question is; what is the symbolic meaning behind each of to these story...
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...In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” the author introduces the readers to a common flaw in society. As people, many see disabilities as a weakness. Carver adopts this attitude in the story in the form of the husband’s prejudiced nature. The way he first greets his wife’s friend is out of obligation and is strained considerably. He sees the blind man named Robert as a relic of his wife’s past who can be treated with contempt. It is not until the near end of the short story does he actually attempt to understand this visitor through conversation. At the mention of a cathedral the two unknowingly rely on each other to show the true meaning of the grand church. The husband is forced to illustrate the depth of such a place to one who has never seen the grandeur of the cathedrals. The blind visitor in exchange transforms the man with understanding and enlightenment of himself and others. The interaction...
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...The Plot and Theme in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” Raymond Carver states that by the mid-1960s he was tired of reading and writing “long narrative fiction” (“On Writing” 46). Shorter fiction, he found, was more immediate. This mode of thought may help us to understand why Carver turned to compose shorter works of fiction like “Cathedral,” a work that acts as a brief glance into how one man’s physical blindness helps another man begin to overcome his own spiritual blindness. Carver’s thematic plots could convey alternate meaning—both directly and indirectly. “Cathedral” introduces the theme of blindness, shown by “this blind man” (Carver 709), but concludes by addressing the deeper theme of internal or spiritual blindness by the host. Therefore, the plot and theme of “Cathedral” relay simultaneous levels of meaning to the reader. “Cathedral” tells a story of an irreligious man, who learns a spiritual lesson from a blind man: “But I had my eyes closed. I thought I’d keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do” (Carver 718). That’s why at the end of the story he does not open his eyes for he wants to “keep them that way for a little longer” so that he can see clearly in his mind. There are two types of blindness, but when we talk about blindness, we usually think of the blindness on our physical body rather than the blindness in our mind. In “Cathedral” both Robert and the host are blind: one is blind in external sight, and the other one is...
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...Ignorance is Not Bliss Cathedral, written by Raymond Carver, is a short fiction essay with the narrator as the real protagonist that goes through a significant transformation. The author’s choice of point of view as well as, the theme and symbolism shown in Cathedral provide evidence to support the protagonist’s epiphany of overcoming his own prejudices. An important theme includes ignorance and understanding and the main symbol of the story is the cathedral itself. These components of the story are important in bringing out the narrator’s epiphany, where he comes to accept people for how they are and realize that he is not superior to someone who has an impairment. Carver chose first person as the point of view for this story. First person narrators are characters who tell the story from the perspective of “I” or “We”. This point of view gives the reader a chance to experience the story how the narrator sees and understands the world. In Cathedral, our narrator speaks in short, chopped sentences in the beginning. This shows the reader that he is lacking self-awareness, arrogant, and/or insecure. The narrator only sees Robert as a blind man, from the start. Throughout the story as the narrator gets to know Robert better, he becomes more descriptive with his sentences and his structure is not as choppy. This is important in showing his change of traits. This demonstrates to the readers that the narrator grows from ignorant to more open-minded and accepting, especially of...
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...Inside The Cathedral In the short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, Carver touches on a personal experience. Carver and his wife were going to have a house guest, a man that his wife had worked with ten years ago over the summer in Seattle. Carver’s wife had stayed in touch with this man, Robert, over the years. The visit was bittersweet, though Robert was going to be reunited with a long-time friend; it was under the conditions that his wife had passed way. He’d come to Connecticut to visit his late-wife’s family and stay with the Carvers. There was one catch, however. Robert was completely blind and this made Raymond carver extremely uneasy, saying that “a wink and a nod are the same to a blind man.” Raymond’s taking on the situation; catering to a blind man; was very socially ignorant. Admittedly so, he said “My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.” (Carver, lines :_). Raymond also offered to take the “blind man” bowling, which is truly a sad, if not just cynical image to bear. Raymond’s wife was extremely nervous to be accommodating to the Robert as well, but it was an excitable nervousness. She longed to be reunited with him, to share stories and catch up, but this was also a man her husband had never met; she could sense the tinge of jealousy and irritation in the air around her husband. She was...
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...In Raymond Carver’s short story “ Cathedral” readers are introduced to a character that experiences change. The story draws readers into the life of a man who is seen as close-minded and selfish. Readers are to believe the narrator is closed off to the world until a certain interaction with a blind man changes his perceptive. Carver’s story uses irony to demonstrate that people don’t need their sight to see life and with this the narrator’s transformation holds a great importance. The story is based on the narrator’s relationship with his wife and how the two will be hostessing a blind man at their home. The wife’s close relationship with the blind man, Robert creates hostility for the narrator. As readers one can interpret that the hostility is derived early in the story towards Robert when the narrator states, “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit, He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me”(1152) The narrator, before even meeting Robert, is already certain he does not care for Robert and he does not in any way feel remorse for him. The narrator is extremely judgmental and close-minded towards Robert’s presence. However, the narrator’s feelings and impression towards Robert drastically change throughout the story and with this the narrator experiences an epiphany. The narrator changes his close minded perceptive on life and allows his insights to open. Robert helps the narrator to undergo this transformation as the two are drawing Cathedrals together. This...
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...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...
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...direction of what you want to see and the image instantaneously appears. The inner, invisible, intangible characteristics require more than receptors and neurons to visualize. Thought and personal investment are required in the visualization of the intangible. In “Cathedral”, Raymond Carver suggests blindness is often an affliction of the heart and soul and not the eyes. Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” is a short story about a husband’s journey to enlightenment. A longtime friend of the wife comes to visit after the death of his wife. The wife meets the blind man, Robert, ten years prior while looking for a summer job. She becomes his assistant. The wife reads briefs, reports, and helps organize the blind man’s office. Over the years the wife and blind man keep in touch; corresponding by sending audio tapes through the mail (Carver). The visit from the blind man is not something the husband is excited about. He remains disconnected from the conversation most of the evening. When the wife falls to sleep, the husband is forced to engage with the blind man. With the persistence of the blind man, the husband engages in a conversation about cathedrals. It is through the process of describing the cathedrals to the blind man that the life of the...
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...August 8, 2013 Even the Blind Can One Day See In the short story “Cathedral” the speaking voice comes from the character known as the husband. The husband appears to narrate the story with the intent of telling it like it is. He makes his opinions, usually negative, very well known to the reader, which I believe makes him appear that much more human to the audience. I chose this story for my final paper because I was able to develop a connection with the husband, or perhaps it was just a feeling of empathy. I could relate to his situation; just like him, at times I find myself feeling lost, troubled, and blind to all the positive things in my life. The husband in Raymond Carver’s short story, “Cathedral,” provides an honest depiction of the young to middle-aged adult struggling to understand his or her place in society. However, it also sheds optimism on the subject by reminding us that we are all capable of change. In this paper, I plan to prove that Raymond Carver provides an extremely honest depiction of the character known as the husband, to address to the audience that even the most flawed are capable of lasting change. The husband stays up every night drinking and smoking marijuana numbing the pain of the life he has made for himself and just feels trapped. To quote the husband, “Every night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep” (Carver 34). I think the husband in this story uses drugs and alcohol as an escape from that feeling of being...
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...Cathedral A common and natural thing that we all do when we meet new people for the first time is to put them into boxes. By putting people into boxes we create prejudices, which is very hard to get rid off. Especially if we meet someone who has a handicap we start to get nervous and many hides their “fear”, thinking that the person with the handicap can’t see or feel our discomfort. But a blind person for example, can easily sense out fear and insecurity because he has a bigger awareness. But if we act nervous around blind people when we meet he/she for the first time, we should act different every time we meet new people. Because there are many ways of being blind and most people are blind to a feeling or emotion, that affect us more than we think. Raymond Carver has in his short story “Cathedral” portrayed this kind of blindness, where the seeing person is blinder than the actually blind person. The short story starts in media res and is set in the present. Our main character is a first person narrator, where we see things from his point of view. He has limited knowledge, which means that he works as an observer, where he doesn’t know anything about the other characters’ inside. It helps us understand why he has a hard time adjusting and accepting the blind man, because we can only hear his thoughts. The language is informal and very everyday like with a lot of dialogs. The dialogs affect the story because, it is in the dialogs that our main character develops, and...
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...Johnson English 1302 January 26, 2016 CATHEDRAL Raymond Carver’s, “Cathedral” is narrated by a man whose wife invited an old friend who is blind to come for a visit. When the story begins, the narrator is not looking forward to the blind man, Robert’s, visit because he thinks blind people are depressing. Robert’s wife passed away a short time ago and he traveled to Connecticut to visit her family. While Robert was there he made plans to visit the narrator and his wife at their home. Robert had previously employed the wife of the narrator, when she lived in Seattle. Her job was to read to him and organize his little office in the county social service department. Throughout the years, they kept in contact by mailing thorough tapes of their lives to each other....
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...What is the Theme? Hollie Ott Introduction to Literature Instructor Lenore Gallucci-Stevenson December 3, 2012 What is the Theme Over the next few paragraphs I want to show what I feel is the theme in the short story The Cathedral by Raymond Carver. This story told in the first person point of view, has a supported theme based on the characters of the story, the symbolism, and the tone. The main character, which is the narrator of the story, is an insensitive man, who cannot come to grips with his wife's distant relationship with a blind man named Robert. Throughout the course of this story the narrator is able to start to understand more that his assumptions of how a blind person should be is not necessarily the way it is at all, and eventually finds himself teaching the blind man how to see a Cathedral. Let me begin with writing in the first person point of view and how it has contributed to the them of this story. First person point of view means the narrator participates in the story by describing their personal actions and thoughts (Clugston, 2010). According to The Writers Craft writing in first person point of view is the easiest for readers because it is more intimate (The Writer's Craft, n.d.). In the Cathedral, the point of view contributes greatly to the theme because one can relate to the feelings of Robert, the wife and the narrator through their conversations. You can sense his hostility toward the blind man as he describes his preconceived idea...
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...Analysis of The Cathedral In the short story Cathedral by Raymond Carver, Carver uses the narrator's doubtful tone and 1st person point of view in order to portray how prejudice and bias is a result of false assumptions based on common stereotypes about the blind. The story ironically shows how the blind man, Robert, is readily open to new experiences and ideas while the narrator, a man who has all of his senses is largely limited by his ways of thinking. In a way, Carver forces the reader to infer that blindness isn’t always a result of physiology, but sometimes a result of one's ignorant perceptions. The narrator is blessed with the ability to see, however, he learns by the end of the story that he will never be able to see through the eyes of a blind man. The first few paragraphs of the story are essential because it quickly sets the mood for what the narrator's attitude and character will be like for a large portion of the story. Carver uses first person to display the narrator's feeling of bigotry and to ultimately show the change of feeling he has towards Robert by the end of the story. Carver’s first sentence of the story is already foretelling of the narrators bias towards the blind man. It reads, “This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night. His wife had died.” By having to state that the man is blind, rather than just an old friend, the narrator is already revealing that he holds a prejudice against the blind. At the beginning...
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...The short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver describes an encounter between the narrator of the story and a blind man named Robert. Robert is visiting because he is friends with the narrator’s wife. At first, the narrator has many ignorant expectations of Robert, but later learns that Robert is nothing as he had expected; the narrator is ignorantly antipathic towards Robert yet is oblivious to his own constraints of sight. In this story about communication and understanding between people, Raymond Carver suggests that seeing beyond the surface involves more than simply looking, and that communicating and looking inward can provide knowledge and a superior understanding of oneself. Throughout the beginning of this story, the narrator believes that the ability of sight is everything. He is uncomfortable with a blind man staying at his house describing it as “not something I looked forward to” (Carver 240). When the wife mentions that Robert’s deceased wife was named Beulah, the narrator asks if she was a negro; this offends the wife so she asks “are you crazy? Have you just flipped or something?” (242). The colour of Beulah’s skin...
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...In both Doris Lessing’s “To Room Nineteen” and Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”, the protagonists exhibit a kind of selfishness. Although they share this similarity, they present their selfishness in different ways, and ultimately make very different life decisions based upon this. The Rawling family had “everything right, appropriate, and what everyone would wish for, if they could choose.” The husband and wife, Matthew and Susan, had a picture-perfect marriage, “…people to whom others came for advice.” Despite this, Susan felt a “certain flatness.” She was endlessly looking forward to the day when their twins would go off to school for the first time, and then all the children would be “off her hands.” When this day came, however, she then resented every moment when they were home, especially during the holidays. This eventually led her to spiral out of control, constantly in search of perfect solitude. Even while taking a walking holiday in Wales, she felt as though “the telephone wire [was] holding to her duty like a leash.” (p. 880). .” Abandoning her family altogether, she discovers a dingy hotel. In Room Nineteen she would sit in the armchair for hours, selfishly enjoying her solitude. “To Room Nineteen” ends as Susan commits the selfish act of suicide, deserting her family once and for all. The protagonist in “Cathedral” displayed clear ignorance throughout a large portion of the short story, and it was especially easy to focus on due to the author’s use of first person...
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