Short Story on Raymond Carver

1055 Words5 Pages
10-05-2013 English 102-006 Word count: 1048 It’s not what you see, but how you see it. Through Raymond Carvers minimalist style in Cathedral (1983) he shows you how the narrator, who is also the main character, grows from being a minimalist himself and how he’s the one who actually has the vision problem, only seeing what he wants to see and really not seeing anything at all. The narrator is a very simple man who seems very narrow minded, as having no emotions for others, or just simply lack of understanding, Carver presents a powerful story of self-realization and human connection. The narrator’s wife has a friend that is visiting and he is a blind man. She met him ten years ago when she was looking for some means of finances. She saw this ad that said “HELP WANTED-Reading to a blind man”. She began working for him and developing a friendship along the way. When she got married and moved away, she and the blind man kept in touch through audio tapes. The narrator is very uncomfortable with a blind man coming for a visit; he quotes “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies the blind moved very slowly and never laughed. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward too” (Carver, 1983/2013, pg. 106). The blind man was on his way to visit his dead wife’s relatives and was stopping on his way there to visit. The narrator couldn’t quite grasp that the blind man was even married. He felt sorry for him a little bit, he had never seen his wife. Then he was thinking what a pitiful life his wife must of led, He quotes “Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one” (Carver, 108). In the narrator eyes being married is seeing and knowing what your spouse looks like, isn’t physical attraction the most important

More about Short Story on Raymond Carver

Open Document