Cathedral Raymond Carver
Cathedral - Raymond CarverMost people know the common attributes of prejudice, but Raymond Carver takes the analysis of this flaw of human nature one step further and writes of how it affects the lives of its holders and their views of the world in a very profound way. There is a beauty that surrounds us all. However, sometimes it takes a dramatic event, a revelation, to make us see this. Raymond Carver gives his protagonist, the husband, this gift of sight in the story of Cathedral. The character of the husband is closed, subconsciously, to all the people and things that surround him. His prejudices keep him in the dark; they make him blind to new things and hold him in a rut of repetitiveness. Until at last, he is opened up to see the world by a blind man.
We can see prejudice in the husband’s character from the beginning of the story. The husband, or Bub as the blind man later names him, says that the blindness of his wife’s friend bothers him (Intro. to Lit, 184). He also states, “A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.” Bub has a preconceived notion of the blind that he does not want to let go of; in fact he does not even want this friend of his wife in his
house. The wording he uses while bringing us up to date on the situation further drives our view of this closed mindedness home. He uses simple blunt sentences and an
almost disgusted tone when he refers to the blind man or his wife.
On her last day in the office, the blind man asked if he could
touch her face. She agreed to this. She told me he touched
his fingers to every part of her face, her nose-even her neck!
She never forgot it (185).
He doesn’t care to see this blind man; he knows his kind, “they moved slowly and never laughed,” (184). He didn’t want this cripple, this Robert, to interfere with his lifestyle even for just a few days.
Robert, the blind man, was a piece of his wife’s past, a piece that Bub did not particularly want to have recalled and brought back up. A past husband, a past love and Robert, they were all in the same boat, they were all bad. He didn’t want to know about his wife’s past husband, and he didn’t want to know anymore about Robert. Bub won’t try to see Robert as a man he can learn from; he will only see him as a blind person, someone who is different.
However, Bub is later surprised. This blind man can carry on a conversation, he can eat a meal, he can enjoy television just like him. Bub begins to see Robert as more than just blind; he takes notice of his clothes, how he carries himself, the state of his balding head. Bub begins to look at Robert as he would another, regular, man. Then the wife begins to talk to Robert of the past. They talk of a past Bub was not part of. “I waited in vain to hear my name on my wife’s sweet lips: ‘And then my dear husband came into my life’—something like that. But I heard nothing of the sort” (189). And
Robert resumes his place in the husband’s mind, a place reserved for the different, the unknown, the not-hims.
It is now that the dope is smoked, like in an Indian pipe smoking ritual tensions ease. The wife goes to sleep and Bub is glad for Roberts company. Robert says an interesting thing, “I’m always learning something. Learning never ends. It won’t hurt me to learn something tonight,” (191). Perhaps the husband will learn something too. Bub decides to describe the images on the television to Robert. A cathedral in particular, and the paintings on its walls. Robert asks if they are fresco paintings and Bub doesn’t know. He sees that Robert knows about things that he doesn’t. He begins to open up, this man is different. Robert asks Bub to draw a cathedral for him so he can see it in his mind.
When he draws, Roberts’s hand atop his, he begins to see. He sees not the cathedral, but something else. We never know what exactly the husband sees on that night, but it is something wonderful. Perhaps he is watching all the years of his life, wasted in idle prejudice, flash through his now awakened consciousness. Whatever he sees, he has now opened up in a way he never thought of before, he sees past Robert’s blindness, his difference. He sees through the walls he has put up in his life, those walls that always lean in and protect him from the world. He says so himself, “I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.” (194). Robert has set him free from his prejudice to truly see the world.
I don’t think Raymond Carver wrote only about a cathedral in his story, he wrote about a man. A man that was not perfect, and who had no intention of trying to be. He
wrote about a man who was held down into an unfulfilling life by his prejudice. But this man received an unintentional gift that would change him. This man, Bub, in a twist of
irony, was able to break free from his dull, his withered, his emaciated life with the help of one whom he was prejudiced against. In a way, one who cannot see opens up the husband to see the world.