An Eye-Opening Experience from Behind Closed Eyes: A Look into Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”

            Ignorance, prejudice, hostility.  These three blights of man all stem from an instinctive fear of the Other, fear of the unknown.  Fear has, in its own way, contributed to the survival of our species.  Take for instance the poor caveman that trusted every move of his prey, not thinking he was in any danger as he, holding a spear, intruded upon the territory of a saber tooth.  Perhaps he flailed around a bit in a teasing fashion.  We can surely agree this is not the brightest of ideas and that’s precisely why he was ravenously torn to bits, meeting a softly gurgling fate within a wild cat’s belly, never to contribute his foolish fearlessness to the gene pool of man.  His cautious counterpart, however, planned an attack, fearing that he would become the dinner of his intended dinner had he not.  The cautious caveman’s plan is victorious as he exercises a bit of prehistoric espionage and returns home with the largest kill, attracting the affections of the most fertile cavewoman in his clan.  Bellies full of tasty cat meat, the two have a wild night of passion and end up parenting a small village, each new member carrying enough fear of dangerous looking wild animals that they will plan an attack before attacking.

            Today, however, it is a bit different.  Rather than fear coming in handy for our survival, it is actually becoming detrimental to such as globalization increases.  There are so many people to be perceived as outsiders that we are constantly lashing out at one another, not understanding that we are of the same.  Wars have been and continue to be waged due to the simple fact that we are not aware of and do not understand the perceptions of others.  This fear of the Other, spawned from ignorance, creates prejudice and, further, hostility.  If only we slowed down for a moment and tried to see the world through another’s eyes, our newfound understanding of experience would expand our own world-view and we would be able to find value, even beauty, in what was once the unknown, unlocking knowledge within ourselves that we never knew we had.

            Author Raymond Carver wrote a short story titled “Cathedral,” in which a man expresses great prejudice and discomfort for one of his wife’s longtime friends that happens to be a blind man.  Due to the close bond the man’s wife and Robert (the blind man) has had throughout the years, the narrator seems to be slightly territorial and jealous, making rude comments about having a blind man in his house.  The two men end up sharing an unforgettable experience as they draw a cathedral together, the narrator ending with his eyes closed and finally feeling what its like to experience the world within, a world without eyesight.  Carver’s “Cathedral” illustrates the idea that through sharing an experience, one can develop an understanding for that which one once feared or hated, allowing one to accept and even cherish a differing perception and what one can learn from it.

            At the beginning of the story, the narrator confesses his apprehensiveness of Robert and his dislike for the blind.  “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit,” he says, “He was no one I knew.”  Robert, as a person, is unknown to the narrator, and therefore, the narrator distrusts him.  Stranger danger, right?  Not only is it in our nature to fear what is unknown, but we’re also taught from an early age not to trust those we do not know"perhaps even to expect the worst from them.  The narrator continues, confessing his prejudices of the blind come from what he’s seen in movies:

 

“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.  A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.”

 

We often form opinions based on depictions through the media rather than personal experience.  We are quick to trust media sources because, hey, if they’re so widespread and public, they must be true!  We tend to forget that media is more often than not comprised of exaggerated characters to communicate an idea for entertainment, product advertisement, or, in the case of much world news, fear mongering as means of social control.  Sometimes we can’t help this, though, considering so much of our knowledge is based in contemporary culture.

To add to the narrator’s fears and prejudices, Robert is a man that has earned the affections of the narrator’s wife through years of intimate friendship.  The narrator’s wife, as he explains, writes poems “usually after something really important had happened to her.”  He explains that she wrote a poem about Robert touching her face to feel what she looked like.  When the narrator mentions that “she recalled [Robert’s] fingers and the way they had moved around over her face,” and how “she talked about what she had felt at the time, about what went through her mind when the blind man touched her nose and lips,” he phrases this in such a way that produces a sexual connotation.  Why not mention the feeling of his fingers on her forehead or chin?  The nose and lips are the most sensitive, most sensual parts of the face, and thus seem more sexual.  The narrator now feels threatened.  Though he never admits to this, his explanation of his wife’s attitude towards another man and his stiff behaviour upon Robert’s arrival communicates his reserved insecurities about his wife and Robert.

            Upon Robert’s arrival, he continually proves to be a surprise to the narrator.  No dark glasses, no cane, a firm handshake, a booming voice, and a sense of humour"not at all like the stumbling, slow-moving, quiet blind of the movies.  Slowly, the narrator’s idea of what a blind person can be begins to change.  At dinner, the narrator is actually impressed with how intuitive Robert is:

 

“I watched with admiration as he used his knife and fork on the meat. He’d cut two pieces of meat, fork the meat into his mouth, and then go all out for the scalloped potatoes, the beans next, and then he’d tear off a hunk of battered bread and eat that. He’d follow this up with a big drink of milk.  It didn’t seem to bother him to use his fingers once in a while, either.”

 

The three characters connect over dinner in that they all enjoy stuffing themselves.  This moment can be seen as symbolic of the old idea that “breaking bread” with others helps to create bonds of understanding and friendship that can potentially last a lifetime.

            When the narrator’s wife retreats upstairs for a while, the two men are left alone.  The narrator busts out a couple joints and offers to smoke with Robert.  This can also be seen as a moment of bonding with a kind of “peace pipe” mentality and in that the narrator is sharing a part of his life with Robert.  Again, the narrator is surprised and in awe of how well Robert adapts to new things.  By this point, the narrator has clearly warmed up to Robert and, although he still feels a bit awkward, he begins showing more hospitality to Robert, wanting to share more than the sounds of the television program on cathedrals with him.  The narrator starts explaining what is happening on the screen, wanting to include Robert in the activity.  The narrator realizes that perhaps Robert doesn’t know what a cathedral looks like.  Just this realization alone shows that the narrator is beginning to understand what life might be like for Robert, always hearing, never seeing.  He is beginning to think about what it must be like to have never seen a cathedral, not even on TV or in a picture.  The narrator’s perception is beginning to shift to accommodate his newfound understanding of his (soon to be) new friend.  He begins to realize just how much he takes for granted as he tries to describe what a cathedral looks like.  At Robert’s suggestion, the two men begin to draw a cathedral together.  The experience quickly escalates into something new and exciting for the narrator:

 

“I put in windows with arches.  I drew flying buttresses.  I hung great doors.  I couldn’t stop.  The TV station went off the air.  I put down the pen and closed and opened my fingers […] I took up the pen again, and he found my hand.  I kept at it.  I’m no artist.  But I kept drawing just the same.”

 

By this, one can interpret that not only is the narrator experiencing something new, but he’s also creating something from his head"he’s building a little world on paper, all from what’s already within him.  It’s so exhilarating that he finds it difficult to stop.  He finishes the drawing with his eyes closed, adding to the internalization of the experience.  When Robert asks how the drawing turned out, the narrator still sits with his eyes closed, amazed at the feeling of living in a world within himself.  “My eyes were still closed,” the narrator says, “I was in my house.  I knew that.  But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.”  The narrator finally understands what the world is like through the eyes of a blind man and he sees all the beauty and value in it, all the internal freedom.  The story ends with the narrator replying to Robert’s inquiry of the drawing, eyes still closed: “It’s really something,” he says.

            Carver’s “Cathedral” shows the progression of a man through prejudice and fear of the unknown into an enlightening moment of understanding and acceptance.  Though the narrator begins the story as someone that holds great animosity for a man he’s never met but who, because of his blindness, he assumes to be drastically different than himself, he ends the story as a changed man, illuminated from his inner sight rather than led by his out sight.  Thus, the story supports the idea that if only we took a moment to internalize our experiences, to attempt to understand the perception of others, we could learn acceptance rather than fear for the unknown.  We could grow in unexpected ways and carry those people and those experiences with us throughout the rest of our lives, perhaps even looking for new experiences like it.  If everyone sought out such experiences, ignorance, prejudice, and hostility could become a thing of the past.