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
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Diane Perry Response Paper 1 Inside a Box Raymond Carver’s the “Cathedral” takes place in somewhere upstate New York with an estimated time frame of a setting of late 1960’s to early 1070’s. The clues of how Robert should travel while coming and going passed the Hudson, should offer the reader a clue where the setting takes place. (Carver 109)The references in the story with a color television set, terms used in the text, the use of cassette tapes, and the use of marijuana
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that the narrator is blind to being open minded and dissatisfied with life. As well as, strict facts, complaining statements, and dynamic phrases showing the reader the social disconnectedness, lacking words, which is perceived to be isolation. As Carver begins the tale, he introduces the “blind man” which some may say the narrator was speaking as though the blind man was himself, although Robert was physically blind he helps a seeing man, the narrator, overcome his interior blindness. The narrator's
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The short story “Cathedral,” by Raymond Carter unravels the epiphany of Bub. In the beginning of the story, Bub is seen to be quite ignorant and blunt about Robert, his wife’s blind friend, coming over to visit after Robert’s wife died. He presumes that having a blind man in his house would be bothersome. The middle of the story shows Bub attempting to connect with the blind man, but struggles relentlessly as he fails to describe the physical features of a cathedral to Robert. Although Bub is viewed
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of American society in the 1940’s. In the play suffering can be seen through the thoughts and opinions of the protagonist Willy Loman, we can see this in Millers use of stage directions, language and time-shifts. Suffering can also be seen in Raymond Carver’s “Short Cuts” which contains stories such as “So Much Water So Close To Home”, “Neighbours” and “They’re Not Your Husband”. Carver’s work was heavily influenced by his upbringing and focuses and blue-collar workers, like his mother and father
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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
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seeing. In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver the narrator is forced by his wife to have a blind man stay with them, and in this time the narrator learns how to “see” from the blind man.The narrator sees with his eyes describing the cathedrals with the general comment that “They reach way up. They’re very tall,” instead of seeing with his heart. Once Robert, the blind guest, teaches him to really see, the narrator knows that “it was like nothing in my life up to now.” In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” the
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faced with an uncomfortable situation with a blind man. He is not depicted as a stereotypical blind man, but as a normal human. He shows the narrator along with the readers that being blind doesn’t hold him back from living life at the fullest. In Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral”, he uses a blind man and the narrator not only to illustrate how stereotypes, specifically towards the blind, can prevent one from seeing and comprehending
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him that her blind friend is going to be visiting. She knew this blind man because she had worked for him “one summer in Seattle ten years ago” (Carver 299). As readers, we get the impression, that the husband feels superior to the blind man because he is able to see, because he continues to say this visit “was not something he looked forward to” (Carver 229). After, the wife stopped working for the blind man she kept in touch with him through audiotape. One day, the narrator’s wife let her husband
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In the story “Cathedral” there are two characters that readers can compare and contrast from the beginning to the end. The first character is the narrator and also the woman’s husband. The second character is an old friend of the woman’s and is also blind. This man has just lost his wife so he came to visit. The woman had taken care of the blind man when she was younger. Throughout the story, the two characters can be compared and contrasted by the affection they give, the way people view them, and
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