Cathedral by Raymond Carver Essay -- Papers Cathedral Raymond Carver E

duomo by Raymond CarverIn Raymond Carver?s ? cathedral?, the conventional ideas practically associated with blindness and sight are challenged. By juxtaposing his deuce male characters, Carver is able to effectively explore sight and its obviously simplistic relationship with learning and knowledge. As well, he addresses the barriers imposed by the military personnel tendency to rely on vision as the touch on means of experiencing the world.At the beginning of the story, the fibber?s perception on blind people as individuals who ?moved slowly and never laughed? meditate non only his but also the views generally shared by society (720). The uneasiness experienced by the narrator at the scenery of ?a blind man in his house? is a representation of the prejudices and fears that we often face when exposed and forced to deal with strange and foreign things (720). cecity seems especially abnormal to us because vision plays such a dull role in our everyday ?normal? lives not seei ng equates to not being able to truly understand and experience the beauties of life. Just penetrating that the blind man had a wife who he ?lived, worked, slept with?had sex?and wherefore buried. All without having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked like? baffles the narrator (722). ?It is beyond his understanding? how anyone can exist in such an incomplete origination and thus is much deserved of his pity (722). As the story progresses the narrator finally meets the blind man who is introduced to him as Robert?before this, the speaker only when refers to Robert as ?the blind man?. The establishment of ?Robert? who ?didn?t use a cane and didn?t ware dark glasses? surprised him? expiry against the conventions that he had always believed seeing this b... ..., only through his forced fundamental interaction with Robert and his blindness is he able to close his eye and afford up his mind. This awakening reveals to him a form of communication, experience and expressio n that cannot just be seen. In the end it is ironic that even though the narrator was attempting to tutor Robert something it was the he who seemed to gain the most from the experience. The blind man and their drawing of the Cathedral are able to defy his previous conceptions of life and thus open a vast array of new possibilities. We are left query how much more the narrator learned about himself and about human communication than the blind man has learnt about cathedrals. BibliographyCarver, Raymond. Cathedral. The Norton IntroductionTo Literature. Jerome Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. one-seventh Edition. New York WW Norton1998.