Cathedral Experience

       The story Cathedral, written in 1981 by Raymond Carver, was my favorite story of the semester so far. This was the story about a man and woman who are visited by one of the woman’s longtime friends who happens to be blind. Even though the man’s name is never mentioned, I loved how real the narrator felt to me. Because he narrates the whole story, we are able to experience what he experienced and get a personal look at this story from his perspective. I believe Carver did this on purpose to allow us to become more personally invested in this story, as if, at the end of of the story, we were sitting on the couch with the three characters, rather than looking at it from an outside third party.

       With that said, the narrator has a sad life. He hates his job, but has no choice except to continue with it. His wife is uninterested in him. He stays up as late as possible to watch television and smoke marijuana because he doesn’t want to go to sleep. He doesn’t believe in anything. His life means nothing to him. He is just going through the motions.

       This is when Robert comes into his life. Robert is admired and loved by his wife and he cannot seem to understand that. According to the narrator, the blind are extremely different than “normal” people like him. For example, he finds it difficult to believe that Robert could ever love a woman or be loved by a woman because of his lack of sight. Because he cannot know what she looks like and because she cannot know what he thinks of the way she looks, the narrator cannot comprehend that a blind man is capable of such a connection. However, despite the fact that the narrator looks down on the blind man as crippled, he is still jealous of the connection that this man has with his wife. He is ignorant of the fact that he is the one holding himself back. The narrator could have this same kind of connection with his wife, but, out of selfishness, refuses to even try. He needs some kind of epiphany or experience to wake him from his laziness.

       I love the way Carver develops the climax of the story. Because the narrator has nothing else to talk about with Robert when his wife goes to prepare for bed, he turns on the television. Feeling awkward watching TV with a blind man, he begins to describe what he is seeing. When a cathedral is displayed, the narrator is unable to describe it. Robert then has the narrator draw the cathedral with Robert’s hand on top so he can “feel” what it looks like. I don’t think that Carver picked a cathedral or that the narrator believes in nothing coincidentally. I believe that Robert is helping the narrator to experience something that is hard to describe. 

       “It was like nothing else in my life up to now.” Everyone has moments that are indescribable. For example, I can’t even begin to describe my hang-gliding experience. Flying through the air is not a natural feeling and it’s definitely something that I cannot describe; all I could say is you have to experience it to understand it. Robert surfaces this feeling in the narrator by opening up his mind and forcing him to experience. The narrator has been living his life as a spectator, seeing things around him but only what is on the surface. A blind man must teach the narrator that there is more to life than just looking. There is so much more than just what happens in front of one’s eyes. Being able to feel, to not see everything so straightforward, to open one’s mind, to experience and appreciate, creates an inner warmth that far exceeds the dry everyday life of the narrator.