An Exploration of Faith Regained in Raymond Carver’s Cathedral Essay Example

his life in this manner, with this kind of private disgust that he cannot fathom. This deliberate refusal to dignify the “blind man” with a first name is seen, and much more outwardly so, elsewhere in the story. Towards the beginning, when the narrator is recapping the history of his wife’s relationship with the blind man, he references her husband before him.

This man he also refuses to name, and even states as much: “Her officer—why should he have a name? he was the childhood sweetheart, and what more does he want? As if to say the man does not deserve to have a name, but for what reason? In both instances here, with both the “childhood sweetheart” and the “blind man,” we see how the narrator reacts to the other men in his wife’s life—like a jealous teenage boyfriend. And again this kind of juvenile jealously manifests in the narrator’s telling of the story when he relates the conversation between his wife and Robert, the finally-named “blind man”: “I waited in vain to hear my name on my wife’s sweet lips: ‘And then my dear husband came into my life—something like that.

But I heard nothing of the sort. ” Judging from the narrator’s constant need throughout the first half of the story to in various ways denigrate and demean the other men in his wife’s life, this man is quite obviously a man with little self-esteem, who gives in to his feelings of inadequacy by lashing out at others. This is simply an establishing of character. Our narrator appears to be angry, bitter, dissatisfied with life, and more than a little immature. This is a

person who is not complete as he is, and who feels that with every single waking breath.

This is a man whose self-worth is invested entirely in what other people tell him, as well as in how effectively he can boost himself up by putting others down—especially when it comes to matters such as competing for his wife’s affections. This is, in essence, a child. He makes a complete mockery out of the “blind man” and everything the “blind man” does solely to boost his appearance of worth. When speaking of Robert’s wedding, the narrator says “who’d want to go to such a wedding in the first place?

When speaking of the Mexican coin Robert kept one half off and buried his wife with the other half, our narrator calls this “Pathetic. ” And even when describing Robert’s appearance, the narrator’s need to assert dominance through mockery is revealed: “This blind man, feature this, he was wearing a full beard! A beard on a blind man! Too much, I say. ” he is exasperated with all of these things, but nowhere in his generally negative musings does he ever offer a concrete reason as to why this man disgusts him so.

The narrator’s ridiculous and unfounded lashing out at Robert can also be attributed to his inability to understand him, another juvenile reaction to an adult issue. It is human nature for a person to confront the idea of “otherness” with reluctance, hesitance, and hostility. This is, in essence, the how and why of the way the narrator reacts to Robert’s presence. The fact that Robert was a blind man bothered the narrator, as he admits in no

uncertain terms in the very first paragraph.

The narrator just simply didn’t know how he was supposed to act around the “handicapped” individual; he did not know what sort of expectations would be placed on him or what exactly “proper behavior” would constitute. He did not understand how it was that a blind man could live a normal life, or be like “the rest of us. ” The idea of blindness was foreign to him, and it made him uncomfortable, and so he met it with the only defense tools at his disposal: bitter mockery and degradation. Our narrator is not a bad man. He is a lost man.

And in an ironic twist in this story, it is a blind man that is finally able to show our narrator the way. While it is true that the narrator’s behavior and commentary exhibited in the first half (or more) of the story belongs more on a playground during the recess of a junior high school than here in the home of a presumably middle-aged man, it must be understood that this is not a man whose heart is evil. It is just empty. At the beginning of the story, the man has no purpose, no meaning to his life. We know this by his behavior, his apparent lack of self-esteem, and his admitted lack of belief in anything.

When Robert comes right out and asks him if he is religious, the narrator responds with, “ ‘I guess I don’t believe in it. In anything. ’ ” But he does truly long for it, and as the story progresses we see him ever-so-tentatively reaching out for help to understand.

In this same conversation, the narrator continues to say, “ ‘Sometimes it’s hard. Do you know what I’m saying? ’ ” It is at this point that the narrator is not just reaching out to this other person, but he is looking for this person to assure him that it’s okay to feel this way, that many people feel this way and there’s nothing wrong with that.

He is prostrating himself before this blind man he once found so revolting and now sees as a sort of wise old sage who can help lead him through his darkness. The narrator’s progression towards his newfound trust and admiration of the blind man is gradual and nearly imperceptible. His first admission of “weakness,” as it were, occurs about three-quarters of the way through the story. After being nervous about being left alone with a blind man, the narrator finally says to Robert, “ ‘I’m glad for the company. ’

And I guess I was. This is the first glimpse the audience receives of the vulnerable, lost person hiding behind the tough-guy exterior. It is right after this comment that we learn something else about the narrator: “When I did go to sleep, I had these dreams. Sometimes I’d wake up from one of them, my heart going crazy. ” While these terrifying dreams of his are never so much as mentioned again, and the mere reference to them seemed random at best, it is significant that this comment came directly after the narrator’s admission of gratefulness at the prospect of another’s company.

These thoughts together exemplify the first chink in the narrator’s armor, the very first point at which he

began to let his guard down and let this blind man in, accepting Robert for who he was and also accepting him for the help and understanding he can offer the narrator. It is while watching a late-night television show about cathedrals around the world that the narrator truly reaches out to Robert, as both a gesture of acceptance as well as a seeking of understanding.

The narrator says to Robert, “ ‘Something has occurred to me. Do you have any idea what a cathedral is? What do they look like, that is? …If somebody says cathedral to you, do you have any notion what they’re talking about? ’ ” Robert’s answer is simple: “ ‘I know they took hundreds of workers fifty or a hundred years to build…I just heard the man say that, of course…The men who began their life’s work on them never lived to see the completion of their work.

In that wise, bub, they’re no different from the rest of us, right? ’ ” The answer is achingly simple, yet also full of all the answers the narrator was looking for. Robert knows cathedrals exist. He doesn’t need to see them know that they are there. He also knows that there is more to these cathedrals than just the structures themselves—there are hundreds of human lives invested in them, who lived to create them and died without ever having finished their work.

This Robert relates to the greater whole of human experience, ultimately stating that these people who lives hundreds of years ago under conditions so drastically different from today were no different than “the rest of us,” pointing out that all of

the human experience is shared, and every person who has ever lived has something in common with every other. All of this he knows, without question, without sight. He does not need to see it to understand it. The narrator is beginning to understand this himself.

When asked by Robert to describe a cathedral, the narrator sees this as a personal challenge: “How could I even begin to describe it? But say my life depended on it. Say my life was being threatened by an insane guy who said I had to do it or else. ” Instead of brushing off Robert’s request with his careless sarcasm, or just grudgingly obliging, the narrator takes this as an opportunity to challenge himself. He is full of self-doubt, and he does not feel that he will be able to succeed, questioning himself aloud to Robert repeatedly, but he tries, and that is the real significance.

Despite not knowing how, not knowing the way, he tries. And the blind man guides him. They draw the picture together—Robert, not able to see, and the narrator, who willingly succumbs to the blind man’s quietly encouraging suggestions, and who finally makes the choice himself to sacrifice his sight to better see. When Robert prompts the narrator to open his eyes and view the drawing, he chooses to keep his eyes closed. “I thought I’d keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do. And when Robert asks him if he is looking, the narrator reports, “My eyes were still closed. I was at my house. I knew that.

But I didn’t feel like I was inside

anything. ‘It’s something,’ I said. ” The narrator was finally able to know, without having to know. He was finally able to understand, without having to see. As noted in Nesset, “the narrator of ‘Cathedral’ finds not escape but sanctuary within self-confinement, his sanctuary existing, by hip, closed eyes, within that inner vestibule of self, where selfishness gives way at last to self-awareness” (online).