After reading “Cathedral,” I do feel that Raymond Carver did take his own advice in adding a little tension in his short story. From the beginning, even before the narrator meets Robert, the blind man, he feels a sense of menace and a feeling of threat towards him. The narrator was already annoyed that his wife had kept in touch with this mysterious man that she worked for once during a summer ten years ago and that he had asked to feel every feature of her face. If that’s not creepy enough for him, the narrator learns that Robert recently lost his wife and was even surprised he had a wife to begin with. He even goes so far to say that he felt sorry for the wife because she would never experience a compliment from Robert or even have him see her facial expressions. The true imminent tension between the two men would be when the wife announced that Robert would be coming to stay at the house for a visit. The narrator of course was ecstatic to have this blind stranger in his house.
However, as the story continued, the narrator seemed to begin accepting Robert’s presence or at least he was going to kick him out. This was apparent when he was listing things that blind people shouldn’t be doing or having and yet Robert was breaking every one of these. He had a full beard, liked his Scotch undiluted, he smoked a great deal of cigarettes, he had an animal like appetite, and he even owned both black and white and color TV sets as well as knowing the difference. The tension in the beginning of the story was significant because it was almost over the top in how a person could not like a blind person, a stranger in fact, too such great extent that he’s going out of his way not to like him.
I think the true detail that gave this story a satisfying ending though not explicitly written was when the narrator finally let go of his intolerance and really began connecting with Robert. It began when they both started smoking blunts. This to me symbolized the easing of the tension between the two of them because of course marijuana is a drug used to make people feel relaxed. Also, I feel that this was when the narrator began opening his closed mind a bit because marijuana is known for expanding your mind. At this stage, the narrator was almost impressed with this blind man, Robert, and began trying to describe to him what cathedrals looked like. The narrator couldn’t quite come up with what he felt was an adequate description of the majesty and immense beauty of such a tall structure of great magnitude.
What gave this story such a satisfying ending for me was when the narrator attempted to draw what he thought the cathedral looked like while Robert felt the clean lines with his fingers. Robert had asked the narrator to close his eyes and when he did, he felt an epiphany. He knew that he was inside his house yet he felt like he wasn’t inside anything. Just pure unending space. Only then did he truly have a glimpse in what Robert’s perspective of life was every single day.
Metaphorically, the blind man had been able to see the entire time while the seeing was in fact blind. But as it says in the Holy Bible, “I once was blind, but now I see.”
