Cathedral by Raymond Carver

I'm not really sure what is expected in terms of format so I'm just going to go for it and hope that that's acceptable. When initially beginning "Cathedral" I wasn't sure what to expect. Judging by the name I honestly thought it was going to be something completely different than what it was. My initial feeling towards the narrator wasn't really a positive one. He seemed to be generally disinterested and apathetic towards anything having to do with his wife (that didn't have to do with him, that is) and seemed to hold some pretty petty ideas about certain things. I thought that it was especially petty when he was discussing the prospect of a blind man marrying a woman and never being able to see her, as if looks and looks alone are what validate a loving relationship. It seemed like the idea of a genuine love with disregard to physicality was lost upon this guy. Also, the narrator had no real desire to care enough to even remember names. When discussing his wife's former childhood sweetheart he even blatantly asks "why should he have a name?" (Booth 33) implying how little he actually cares about that person's significance in his wife's life. Even after learning Robert's name he insisted on calling him "the blind man" as if he was some inhuman being that was so vastly different and needed constant labeling. But I did like that as the two were able to spend more alone time together they both ventured into each other's worlds in a way. Robert enjoyed smoking marijuana for the first time with the narrator, and was open minded and welcoming when asked about it. Then, the narrator began trying to describe a cathedral, and as they began to draw a cathedral together (in order to better explain what one looks like) the narrator finds himself outside of his general perspective of reality and in that of Robert's. His eyes are closed, he's "taking in" the cathedral that he just drew, and he's beginning to empathize with Robert just as the story ends. I did enjoy that, and it honestly reminded me of meditation and the peace that shutting out the external world and focusing inward can bring. To help give you an idea of what this feels like, here's a link to a guided meditation on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh-klfBJlHc

Works Cited

 

Booth, Alison, and Kelly Mays, ed. The Norton Introduction To Literature. 10th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. 32-44. Print.