Ignorance In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

Blindness does not come from closing our eyes, but from our own ignorance of others. Raymond Carver does a good job exemplifying this theme in his story Cathedral. The main focus of this story is to show the transformation of the narrator bub from being the ignorant and jealous man he is to opening himself up to others and feeling empathy. The story focuses on three characters; the narrator Bub, his unnamed wife, and the wife’s blind friend Robert. The Story starts off with the narrator Bub talking about a visitor coming for the evening; his wife's old friend Robert. Bub, the narrator, is troubled by Roberts visit because of his own biased views about the blind. His superiority complex plays a large role in his view of Robert since Robert …show more content…
From the beginning of the story we as the reader already have a taste of the type of person the narrator Bub is. We as the reader can understand how the narrator is feeling through the his syntax. Mark Facknitz in his article ““The Calm,” “A Small, Good Thing,” and “Cathedral”” says that, “He [The Narrator] has little experience with the blind and faces the visit anxiously. His summary of the wife's association with Robert is derisive, it’s syntax blunt, and its humor fatiguing” (Facknitz 292). Which is something I agree with. The way The Narrator describes his wife's history with the blind man is very blunt and to the point, as if he were not very excited at all about Robert's visit. In the first paragraph he already confesses his feelings toward the blind man Robert when he says,”He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies.. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (32). From his admittance to not wanting a blind man in his home we gain a sense of bub's ignorance and biased towards the blind. The narrator keeps to himself as we see, and does not do well with others. Bub then goes onto talking about stereotypes of the blind, such that blind men never laughed, didn’t know how to have fun, and needed seeing eye dogs. Furthermore we see how Bub is easily manipulated and persuaded by the media’s interpretation, …show more content…
This is evident especially when his wife talks about poetry and how she only wrote poetry when important things had happened in her life, such as when she let Robert touch her face. Bub did not react well to his wife's poetry. “She showed me the poem. In the poem, she recalled his fingers and the way they had moved around over her face… I can remember I didn’t think much of the poem. Of course, I didn’t tell her that. Maybe I just don’t understand poetry.” (33). Although he says he doesn't understand poetry, and that is why he doesn't think much of it, however it is possible to speculate denial as a motiv. Jealousy and insecurities plays a prominent role with Bub. Facknitz points out in his article that the narrator is clearly jealous about Robert touching his wife's face though the way he emphasises the erotiscism about the event (Facknitz 293). The narrator analysis this action saying,”[T]he blind man asked if he could touch her face. She agreed to this. She told me he ran his fingers over every part of her face, her nose - even her neck! she never forgot it” (33). The narrator places emphasis on what in his mind maybe seen as very erotic because of the jealousy he feels inside. Moreover, it can be speculated that the relationship that Bub has with his wife is not a good one. Especially when he states the way his wife looks at him, “My wife finally took her eyes off the blind man and

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