by Drew Woodson

Created on: January 18, 2009

Raymond Carver's short story "Cathedral" unites two people, one blind, one sighted for an evening of shared experience. For a man who can see, the narrator in "Cathedral" says little about what he sees. In the story, there are few physical descriptions, few lasting images. The narrator never describes in detail his house or his wife. He mostly talks about action in short direct sentences. In describing his wife's relationship to the blind man, he uses the repeating structure, "She [verb]." His only attempt to describe the physical features of something comes at the end of the story when he describes a cathedral to Robert, but he is unable to do so with any feeling or vividness. He excuses himself saying, "I'm just no good at it." He implies that he cannot describe the cathedral because he does not have strong feelings about it. But when Robert asks him to present the cathedral on paper, to look at the building in a different dimension, it takes on new meaning. He is able to help Robert see what he could not describe, and he is able to see more significance where before he saw only stone buttresses and gargoyles.

If the narrator's lack of description in the story signifies some shallowness in his perspective, then the end of the story shows a change in that perspective. With his eyes closed, he can only feel. Robert says, "I think you got itTake a look." And the narrator's response is his most genuine statement of the story: "It's really something." Where before his eyes saw a surface without significance, he now senses beyond that surface. One of the last additions Robert asks for in the narrator's drawing of the cathedral is people. "What's a cathedral without people?" he asks. The cathedral evolves in the narrator's imagination from inadequate surface descriptions to something with people inside. Carver suggests that the same change in perspective can happen in regards to the bearded blind face and the open robe that are sharing the house with the narrator when he has his epiphany.

The blind man and the narrator share their blindness. The narrator is blind to much of the beauty around him. The blind man often sees this beauty. The narrator wants to connect with this other dimension but hesitates to let go of his grasp on what is real and seen. It is for this reason he uses drugs and alcohol. He wants to numb himself rather than engage the world. In the end, the blind man brings him into a new understanding of the physical world, one that is muti-faceted.

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