Character Blindness in “Cathedral”

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Character Blindness in “Cathedral” Each character in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” possesses a level of blindness. Immediately introduced to Robert, the blind man, a long time acquaintance of the narrator’s wife, his physical blindness is made abundantly clear by the 70 references to him as “the blind man” by the narrator (Carver, 2004, pp. 408-418). Additionally, the narrator exhibits his in ability to see past Robert’s physical shortcomings, as he never once references him by his first name and through his preconceived ideas of what a blind person represents. “My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs” (Carver, 2004, p. 408). It is through the introduction of each character in “Cathedral” that their initial personal level of blindness is established. These levels convey the irony of the sighted seeing far less than the blind. It is only through their association and ultimate connection with Robert that the sighted characters learn to see. The narrator’s wife at first does not see the poor choices she has made in life. As the narrator describes, her first marriage left her empty, lonely, and cut off from the world. To her the only solution was a failed suicide attempt (Carver, 2004). Nevertheless, what made the wife so keenly aware of the bleakness of her life was her initial association with Robert as her employer. On that final day of employment, the day that Robert asked to touch her face, a sensation befell her, one perhaps that made her feel beautiful, important, things that her fiancée never made her feel. Moreover, she never forgot what that moment meant to her. As the narrator points out, “She even tried to write a poem about it. She was always trying to write a poem. She wrote a poem or two every year, usually after something really important

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