Cathedral Analysis Essay

Analysis on Cathedral

All human beings have some type of stereotypical impression, either good or bad, about certain individuals with a specific feature or disability. In the story Cathedral, by Raymond Carver, the saying Do not Judge a book by its cover becomes a reality to the anonymous male narrator, upon the arrival of the blind man into his house. With the use of symbolism, point of view and irony, carver shows that the unnamed male narrator, who is referred to as Bub by the blind man, Robert, grows as a character and drops his conventional prejudice towards blind people.

Using the first person point of view, Carver, lets us get a personal understanding of The narrator and the way he sees things through his eyes. We clearly see prejudice in the narrators character from the starting gate of the story. In the beginning of the story, the narrator says, In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. Even before the arrival of the blind man, the narrator has a predetermined idea that blinds are depressed and slow people who are incapable of functioning without their seeing canine. The fact that The narrator got his stereotype from the movies and believes in them not only shows how puerile and biased he is but also his ignorance. He also shows his prejudice rude comments by asking Robert, What side of the train did you sit on? The narrator lives in a protected home and Roberts coming over to stay the night is an assault on his stereotypical fort. Therefore he states that, A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to. With the use of the first point of view, the reader understands where the narrators stereotypical notions are coming from; where as the use of another point of view would not have made it as intimate. The narrator did not have any change on his outlook, until the Cathedral comes into the equation.

Using the cathedral as a symbol of belief and metamorphosis, the author lets the reader see the slow and gradual transformation of the narrator. In the process of drawing the cathedral, "Close your eyes now, the blind man said to me. I did it. I closed them just like he said It was like nothing else in my life up to now. The drawing of the cathedral makes the narrator have faith in Robert, so he starts to draw blind and at the end the narrator has transformed into something which he never thought he was going to be. The transformation of the house into a cathedral marks the moment in which the narrator starts changing. The narrator says, First I drew a box that looked like a house. It could have been the house I lived in. Then I put a roof on it. At either end of the roof, I drew spires. The transformation of the house into a cathedral in the drawing symbolizes the change of his house into teaching grounds. The blind man is a depiction of a preacher who teaches to a student, the narrator, just like in a Cathedral. In addition, the process of illustrating the cathedral becomes the pinnacle of the story when carver uses detailed imagery, like crazy, to describe the kind of the portrayal that the husband generates. The symbol of the Cathedral came towards the end of the story.

Carver uses irony to depict different characters at different times according to their condition in the story. In the beginning of the story, in his stereotypical state, the narrator says, Maybe I could take him bowling. He says that to his wife in order to show his dissatisfaction with the blind man visiting. The main irony that that author uses in this short story is that it took a blind man to make an ignorant prejudice man with both eyes to see. The blind man came into the house and showed him that he was an interesting as a person as his wife had insisted. As the narrator spends more time with Robert, he sees that Robert is just another human being and starts leaving his stereotypes behind. The blind man is able to see things that others are not able to see, so by making the narrator draw with him he lets him experience that visions that he has. The narrator describes it as, His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now. It was different because the narrator has transformed dramatically.

In conclusion, the reader is guided with the point of view, symbolism and Irony, through out the transformation of the narrator from a prejudice man to more of an accepting one. His prejudices keep him in the shadows; they make him blind to new things and hold him in a channel of uniformity. Until he walks in the light and his eyes are opened up to see the whole world by a blind man.