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Jing C*** Profeor Stephanie Denny English 1102 26 September 2015
Isolation and Reunion The novel “Cathedral” was written by American Minimalistwriter and poet Raymond Carver in 1982.After a thorough analysis of “Cathedral”, one can understand the fictional construction of its charactersandcomprehend the purpose of the theme presentedin this novel.Throughout the conflict between the narrator “I”, his wife and the blind man, Carver shows the significance of “Cathedral”, which symbolizes love, hope and redemption.In the opening of the story, Carver highlights the main characters common bond of solitude.Although they share that similarity, they are all very different.Initially, Narrator “I” hadan active relationship with his wife, but as time paed he became more and more isolated, apatheticand lonesome.Carver usesunreliable first person characterthe “I” totalkabout his wife’s past in regards toher mental activity.Itmeans they had always maintained a great line of communication with each other;his wifealways opened up to him about herself.Carver never explains how the couple began to separate and become indifferent with one another.It may have been the stre of his job, or the dullne of his life altogether, butthe “I” began to isolate himself from his wife and everyone else.He was did not have a social life or friends for that matter;something that was discovered during a conversation between he and his wife.Instead, the“I” would comfort himself by indulging in alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana and TV shows.The culture of television is also an important part of Carver’s works “Simmons argues that television's presence in Carver's stories signals two things:
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a moral vacuity and historical superficiality in the lives of characters attributable in part to television's evisceration of historical “depth” in their lives”(Mullen 52).It was during this time thata poor blind man chosethe “perfect” time to visit an old friend, the “I’s” wife.During the blind man’s visit, the narrator andhost“I” become defensive and display resentment against the friendship between his wife and the blind man because the blind touched his wife 10 years ago, “She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose---even her neck!She never forgot it”(104).Although the blind man has never occupy her, the “I” still feels very mind of this old friend of her because “the sense of touch is more intrinsic than vision”(Armour 145), furthermore, they kept touch in the past ten years.So when the blind man arrives at his house, all readers can smells narrator’s antipathy, “This blind man, feature this, he was wearing a full beard!A beard on a blind man!Too much, I say”(106).Start from here, the conflict is set at the beginning of the story.The second character in this story is the narrator’s wife.She considered suicide in her first marriage and now she’s suffering another lonely marriage due to lack communications with her husband.Carver showcases her current badmarriage through contrast it with her friendship with blind man.“Over the years, she put all kinds of stuff on tapes and sent the tapes off lickety-split…She and I began going out, and of course she told her blind man about it.She told him everything”(105).Carver doesn’t give any clear and direct reasoningto explain why this couple’s relationship is crumbling, buthe writes, “Once she asked me if I’d like to hear the latest tape from the blind man…I said okay… We were interrupted, a knock at the door, and we didn’t ever get back to the tape.I’d heard all I wanted to”(105).From here, readers should know the answer, the “I” doesn’t care about her and her tapes and he doesn’t care for the blind man as well.Therefore, the blind’s visit sharpens the conflictsof the story.Chuai 3
The third character, as well as the key character of “Cathedral” is the blind man.He isalso isolated, but diimilar from the narrator who is self-isolating and his wife who is isolated by her husband.The Blind man is isolated by the social discrimination and biases.“He was no one I knew…My idea of blind man came from the movies.In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed…A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to”(104);“…Beulah and the blind man had themselves a church wedding…just the two of them, plus the minister and the minister’s wife”(106).Unfortunately, this blind man visits this inhospitable host, and without a doubt, the narrator is very impolite to him.In response to the “I’s” hostility, theblindman demonstrates his tolerance as well as intelligence.When the “I” sneers at him with the sites of the Hudson River sight viewing boat, he changes the topic tactfully to his “distinguishedbeard(107)”.When the “I” talks about the changing the TV channel, the blind replies, “Whatever you want to watch is okay…Learning never ends… I got ears”(110).The blind man also doesn’t refusemarijuana when offered a smoke from the “I”.He simply replies, “There’s a first time for everything”(109).Thus it can be understood that all responses from the blind man are very friendly and open-minded.No matter how cruel his life, and no matter how poorly people have treated him, the blind man always remains positive and optimistic.Carver gives blind man a character that is completely accepting of reality, which is the opposite ofthe “I”.The conflict is sharpened by the contrast between the two different characters---the insightful blind man and isolated normal vision the “I”.Finally, when the story reachesthe climax, Carver shows the readers his finalredemption---Cathedral.What is the cathedral symbolize in this story?First it represents the life, “If somebody says cathedral to you, do you have any notion what they’re talking about”, “I know they took hundreds of workers fifty to hundred years to build…they never lived to see the completion of
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their work.In that wise, bub, they’re no different from the rest of us, right?”(111).Secondly, the cathedral represents faith, which was once heldby people but is now lost.“In those olden days, when they built cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God…God was an important part of life…I don’t believe in it, in any thing”(111).Lastly, the cathedral also represents the hope and love in blind man’s faith.Church is mentioned twice in this story, once at blind man’s wedding, and again during the TV show.Although the blind man can’t see the building of cathedral, he already knows the meaning of it.The cathedralrepresents the most eential regreion of human interaction.The blind man wants to enticethe narrator with it, showing the“I” how amazing the cathedral looks like in his mind: as happine, love and hope.At the close of the story, “I” finds his perfect cathedral in his mind with his eyes closed.“His concerns are the relationship between sight and insight, the mind’s eye and the theme of blindne, the disjunction between the eye of the artist and the production of the artist’s hand.The works, all of which appear in the text, are of several varieties: depiction of blindne, relation of blindindividuals to their environment, blindne cured, blindne that brings insight, the self-portrait and self-portrait series and its diachronic relationship to landscape portraiture.”(Forman)Carver’s story represents a minimalistic-style novel.Carver hopes this story can help every confused and isolated personfind hope, love and begin to reestablish healthy forms of communication.He realizesmany peopleisolate themselves from crowds, such as the narrator.Carver gives the solution of how to return each isolated individualback to the world: hope,while finding the homeland of the soul, which is the cathedral.Works Cited
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Raymond, Carver.“Cathedral.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama and Writing.Ed.X.J Kennedy and Dana Gioia.8th Compact Ed.New York: Pearson, 2016.415-16.Print.Mullen, Bill.“A Subtle Spectacle: Televisual Culture inthe Short Stories of Raymond Carver.” Critique 39.2(1998): 99.Academic Search Complete.Web.21 Sept.2015.Armour, Leslie.“Paper Machine/On Touching--Jean-Luc Nancy.” Library Journal 130.14(2005): 145-146.Literary Reference Center.Web.21 Sept.2015.Forman, Robert J.“Memoirs ofthe Blind.” Magill’S Literary Annual 1995(1995): 1-3.Literary Reference Center.Web.21 Sept.2015.
