Raymond Carvers “Cathedral” harbors much tension and an unspoken sense of menace. The tension is by purely sexual and sex is the unspoken threat lurking in the background. Its presence is elusive, sometimes coming to the tip of the literary tongue, other times remaining in the textual subconscious. We get a tingling sense of it when we hear about the wife’s face being touched by the blind man. Our senses are more aroused to delicate mention of his progression to her neck. And just as we feel we are reaching the climax of the truth, we are turned to other events.
The dialogue leading up to the final scene is one of jealousy and assertion. Both husband and wife want to be the center of attention and affection by the blind man. The husband does so as to detract from his interacting with his wife, and the wife for her own agenda. Meanwhile the blind man teases and further infuriates them both by not responding in favor to one or the other. Just when the husband concedes and relaxes his grip, he is seduced by the blind man. But the seduction is not directed solely to gratification of the blind man, but for the enlightening of the husband. The blind man wishes to take him to a place he has never been: a blind unseeing place but a place where non-the-less everything is illuminated from the fog and confusion of sex and love.
