Resumo de Cathedral - Raymond Carver

In Cathedral, we see a man who is blind to his own prejudices and the differences in others. He?s not into self enlightenment or development and he deals with his problems by dulling his senses with alcohol and pot. Although he isn?t visually impaired, we recognise that he is severely handicapped in other ways. On the other hand, Robert the blind man, who is positive in nature and outlook, is committed to life-long learning and different experiences. He ?sees? through his other senses; his mind, his ears, giving him more vision than the narrator. The theme, that a blind man helps a seeing man to open his eyes, culminates in a transcendent moment, an epiphany, where the seeing man discovers empathy for others and sees outside himself. The conversations between the narrator and the blind man are critical to the story. Carver uses their conversations to reveal their characters and draw out the themes. Carver draws on the mundane and obvious, using irony, to reveal the extraordinary. In the climax, the reader experiences an extraordinary transaction, leaving a lasting impact, of watching a blind man help a seeing man see.

Dan Schneider (2005) says that Carver takes the clichéd, mundane and what we take for granted and helps us to see the miracle of the visible and invisible transforming the everyday into a fresh new revelation. If Carver hadn?t portrayed the narrator in such a negative light, this moment of revelation, or ?epiphany? wouldn?t have had such an impact on the reader.

Carver uses dialogue to reveal his characters, as he once said he didn?t like wasting dialogue and this is how we get to know them. Carver?s use of the everyday and ordinary to bring about the extraordinary is what qualifies him for ?master of the quotidian? (Schneider 2005). In Cathedral, the narrator?s tone is condescending and his voice is narrow-minded. It reflects a closed minded, racist, bigot resentful and jealous of his wife?s relationship with her ex employer, Robert who is blind (and the only one given a name in the story). Although his wife only worked with Robert for a very short time ten years ago, they kept in contact by making tapes and mailing them back and forth. He wasn?t enthusiastic about Robert?s visit because he didn?t know the man and his being blind bothered him.

It bothered the narrator that his wife and Robert had talked about him and he didn?t like hearing his name mentioned out of the mouth of a blind man who he didn?t know. By his own confession, the narrator?s only understanding of blindness came from the movies where blind people moved slowly and never laughed and were sometimes led by seeing-eye dogs and he was not looking forward to having a blind man in his house. His comments reveals a man with a narrow mind, closed off to differences in people, intolerant and prejudice towards blind people. Carver said ? The character there is full of prejudices against blind people. He changes; he grows? (Stull 1995-96).
Carver is known for creating distant and dismissive characters, lending himself to the minimalist approach for which he is compared to Hemmingway (Dota 2003). This dismissive detachment is reflected though his short sentences and sweeping summaries of others, brushing over important details of his wife?s life which are no doubt very important to her but unworthy of further explanation by him. A good example is when he describes his wife?s past, he says ?she met a guy married, divorced. He doesn?t need a name?. He didn?t care for her poetry, didn?t understand it but he pretended to. This reveals a dismissive, distant and detached character. The heavy drinking and pot smoking shows further detachment. He?s very insulated and in a state of voluntary blindness.

Robert is left in the dark only by his visual impairment. His positive and optimistic tone and voice is loud and big in many ways. He is very is friendly and outgoing. He has done a bit of everything, from running asales distributorship to travelling in Mexico to broadcasting radio. These activities have brought him out into the world as far as Alaska and Tahiti. Robert has a strong personality, even though he is dealing with his own grief, having just lost his wife; ?I know about skeletons,? he says, responding to the narrator's query regarding the TV. Robert, despite his visual impairment, has achieved a lot in his life using his other senses to communicate and connect with people in ways that the narrator falls short in.
When Robert enters the house, the first thing the narrator does is offer him a drink. Perhaps this puts himself at ease more than the blind man. The narrator appears to abuse alcohol as he consumed a lot during the course of the story and was still going where others perhaps would have passed out. At the same time he was consuming quantities of pot. Chance are he?s using these mood altering substances to numb his feelings and stay in denial to the tension in his marriage; voluntary blindness. The tell-tale signs that the marriage is in trouble are smoking pot every night, separate bed times, bad dreams and some heated discussions throughout the story. (...cont)

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