The Cathedral
In the short story Cathedral, by Raymond Carver, the reader is shown a middle-aged man and his psychological development as he meet an old friend of his wife's, a blind man named Robert. The man tells us the story from his point of view. We hear all his thoughts about the situation and the other people involved and because he tells the story we don't know his name. It's a contemporary history, it happens in out time, in New York. It's working class, neither rich nor poor.The leading character is a man with many prejudices - no matter what it is; when it's different than him he has an opinion about it."She'd told me a little about the blind man's wife. Her name was Beulah! That's a name for a colored woman."He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. 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." The above quotes show his prejudices towards people with a different skin colour and a handicap. Since it's his thoughts, it's the first thing that pops into his head and it's his honest opinion on people who are in one way or another different than him.
ied and a bit grumpy at times and always comes with these small negative words to every thought he has about Robert. During the night that he, after his wife goes upstairs, spends alone in the living room with Robert, he changes. Respect people regardless of their skin colour, handicap or any other part where they might be different than you. My wife looked at me, her mouth agape. He recently lost his wife and is visiting the man and wife on his way to some relatives. Slowly he starts to talk to Robert and explains to him what he sees on the TV. Robert is very aware of him self, which I believe is very normal for a person with a handicap like the one Robert has, he doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would get uncomfortable around other people, it's more the other people, who get uncomfortable around him because of the situation that he is in. Once he goes in front of the barrier and starts to look at Robert as Robert and not just a blind man - they connect suddenly. Earlier he was always on the alert, always observant, but as he closes his eyes in the end along with Robert, they're on the same path and they connect, he becomes one with himself, it's like Robert open his mind and he can finally relax. His not happy about this man's visit, his wife's past with Robert annoys him and even after he's introduced to Robert, he still only refer to him as the blind man. Words like spiffy, creepy, pathetic, too much are all words he uses to describe his thoughts on Robert. "'Now let us pray,' I said, and the blind man lowered his head. He doesn't know why he does it, but I think it's because he finds Robert's handicap a little bit fascinating and of cause he also, at first at least, feels obligated to do so. He doesn't wear the traditional dark glasses that we often connect with blind people and in the description we get of him, he seems to look exactly like any other man.
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,
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