“Cathedral,” by Raymond Carver, tells the story of a man named Bub, who must entertain one of his wife’s friends, Robert. Robert, who is a blind man, visits the family after his wife’s passing and wishes to spend some time with the wife of the narrator. Despite his attempts at being a good host to his wife’s guest, Bud seems to fail miserably. Through his actions at the beginning of the story, Bud does not show signs of understanding of what it means to be blind and so, in a sense, becomes blind himself to the life non-seeing people led. In Carver’s writing, Bub’s ideas of the blind are clouded: “My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.” (267). Here we can see that Bub has very limited knowledge of the blind and sees them as dull people who lack emotion. Bud’s opinion of the blind seems to seep through as he tries to converse with Robert as well. “Which side of the train did you sit on?”(269) Bub asks Robert. Because Robert is blind, it would not make much of a difference where he had sat on the train because he would not have been able to obverse the view; yet this idea seems to surpass Bub’s thinking and he is left embarrassed in front of his wife and Robert.
Robert seems to understand Bub’s difficulty with the blind and so he tried to help Bub understand what it is like to be a non-seeing person. While watching television together, a picture of a Cathedral comes onto the scene and Robert asks Bub to get some paper so that the two of them can draw it. During the course of their work, Bub closes his eyes and when they are done, does not open them to see his work. At this point, Bub seems to realize that the world of blind is very different from his initial views of it and Carver ends the piece by saying “My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything. ‘It’s really something,’ I said” (279). This last part of the story seems to show Bub in a new light; a light in which he is no longer blind to the blind-man’s world.
I leave you with two questions:
1) Have you ever experiences a situation in which you have been approached by a blind person (perhaps on the subway)? If so, what was it like for you? Did you feel awkward in that situation? If not, how do you think you would respond to such a situation?
2) Finally, what do you personally think that Bub saw/felt when he closed his eyes? What would you have seen/felt?
For the first question, I have seen several blind peoples on the street wearing dark glassess and holding the stick with seeing-eye dogs.
I feel sympathy instead of awkward because it is miserable for a blind man to live abnormally as a regular person do. I heard from the eye doctor saying that the only color that blind peoples can see is black but their sense of hearing are much better than normal people so I can’t imagine how can they live by relying on the hearing and touch? When the blind man passed by me I am afraid of getting touch with him because I may run him down. Some blind people have a very tough mind but some don’t. If you touched he/she neglectfully then he/she may thought you are going to hurt or making fun of him/her intentionally. Therefore, I just leave far far away from blind peoples when I see them because I don’t want to make them feel trouble.
For the second question, I personally think that Bub saw nothing when his eyes are closed but he feels clueless on everything because he feels “My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.” (279). Robert is trying to let him feels what blind peoples feel when they can not see anything so Bub which the narrator is feeling insecure when his eyes are closed. If I closed my eyes for few hours in my house and still active then I will feel horrible because I don’t know what is going on around me. Therefore, Can anyone imagine how can blind peoples living under the sense of insecure and how can they adapt the society while everyone is using a different sight to see them?
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