Saturday, June 16, 2007

Cathedrals

How would you describe the short story "Cathedral" written by Raymond Carver? I found it to be a story of immense change. As the story, begins we meet a husband describing a situation that his wife has enveloped him in, about a blind man who had given his wife a job. At the beginning, the husband did not appreciate that his wife had told this blind man that he could stay with them. The three characters in this story are blind in different metaphorical ways. The husband is blind because he does not tend to the cares of his wife but is instead selfish. The woman is blind because she does not realize that her husband does not like new things and also that he is there so she should be talking to him instead of the blind man. Robert, however, is literally blind and cannot see through his eyes. In this story the husband is very prejudice against the blind man, he even goes to the point of not saying the blind man's name but instead just replying to him as the blind man. This tells that the husband did not want to give this blind man an existence in his world. I think he probably thought himself better because he stereotyped what a blind person is like. He eventually came over this though, I think, because at the end he kept his eyes closed as he drew the cathedrals. I do not agree with the narrator's prejudice against the blind man because he is a man like any other man. He shouldn't be discriminated against just because he is different! I did find this story to be very prejudice and controversial where you can have many a opinion about it but none of the opinions are necessarily right.

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