Literary Analysis Paper – Cathedral

Literary Analysis paper – Cathedral “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver tells us short story about a blind man who comes to visit his friend and her husband. In the story, even though the husband can technically see and has a normal sight, in the beginning of the story he is the one who shows the signs of true “blindness” through inability to see Robert beyond his blindness, incapability to communicate with Robert, him feeling uncomfortable and acting awkward around Robert. The husband does not realize how Robert’s blindness changes him as human being.

Carver skillfully shows the occurrence of change in the personality of the husband from being very awkward around a blind man to coming to realization that Robert is a person and not just a blind man. In the story, “Cathedral” Carver brings out the concept of husband’s spiritual blindness and the theme of broke marriage to shows what is wrong with the modern world. Carver portrays husband’s spiritual blindness to show parallel to the spiritual blindness of the modern world.

The narrator sees his wife’s blind friend as handicap and not as a whole person. The narrator is not enthusiastic about the visit because blind people make the narrator uncomfortable “… and his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movie the blind move slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. The blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (114). In this way, Carver shows how spiritual blindness can limit people in our everyday life just as it did the husband.

In reality, spiritually blind people are unable to understand matters beyond their physical site. The theme that Carver touched in the “Cathedral” of the spiritually blind verses physically blind has been touched in the Bible as well. Passage in John 9:1-41 points out an interesting comparison between physical and spiritual blindness that takes place in this passage. It mainly describes how a blind man who believed in Jesus as the Son of God was forgiven and men with sight who could not see what the blind man saw remained in their sin.

It very much gives reassures that personal understanding of the truth, understanding of the things beyond your physical sight are far more important that the physical. Carver brings this theme in order to show the reader the problematic spiritual blindness of our modern society that looks more at the physical rather than looking at thing in a more deeper and meaningful prospective. Another way in which Carver points out the concept of broken marriage relationships in our society is by portraying characters as being in an unhappy, depressed marriage relationship.

The narrator lacks true marriage relationship with his wife, as is evident not only in their sparring in the narrative present, but also in the remoteness of perspective as he tells the story of her attempted suicide a few years before: “. . . one night she got to feeling lonely and cut off from people she kept losing in that moving-around life. She got to feeling she couldn’t go it another step. She went in and swallowed all the pills and capsules in the medicine chest and washed them down with a bottle of gin. Then she got into a hot bath and passed out. But instead of dying she got sick. She threw up.

Her officer—why should he have a name? he was the childhood sweetheart and what more does he want? —came home from somewhere, found her and called the ambulance” (115). Although an attempt to suicide may be considered a personal weakness, nether the less, the unhappy marriage relationship had its influence in this matter. Relationship with a person who has mental health problems can lower the satisfaction levels. It surely takes a toll to live with a depressed person. Like in the case with the narrator and his wife, the more depressed and more anxious they become, the more dissatisfied is the marriage.

Untreated depression poses a very real threat to a marriage such as in the situation with the wife. This is in reality a big problem in our society today. Such as in the story husband and wife experienced depressed relationship and indeed, in the reality the depressed spouse will experience less happiness, satisfaction and contentment in the marriage. Narrator mentions “… every night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep. My wife and I hardly ever went to bed at the same time… and in reality the partner will struggle with handling the increased isolation and social withdrawal of the depressed spouse, the loss of emotional intimacy, (and often sexual intimacy as well), and the prevalent negativity in the relationship. When one spouse is depressed, the depression colors everything in the relationship. The depressed spouse sees the world through a darkened lens that limits his or her perspective. The author wants to point out that the negative events are interpreted even more negatively; neutral events are also interpreted negatively, and the positive appenings are often overlooked. The depressed spouse often loses interest in activities that used to bring pleasure and may experience fatigue and listlessness. There can be loss of sleep or sleeping too much; eating too much or be like the husband that smokes marijuana to bring some excitement in to his life. Feelings of love and sexual desire may become dulled or absent when an individual is depressed. The biggest danger when this happens is that the depressed spouse may erroneously conclude that this means he or she is no longer in love with the mate.

In conclusion, I would like to draw parallel between the story of “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver to our modern society. In our modern society, we continue to meet individuals similar to the character of the “husband” who have physical but not spiritual vision as well as facing similar broken marriage problems. The issues that Carver touched in his story are rather social and relevant to our modern society rather than related to single individual. In addition, we see individuals similar to the “blind man” who are physically disabled; however, they exhibit a truer intuition into life and their surroundings.

They have the ability to see spiritual concepts and understand people and the world around them. We learn from the story that those who are physically enabled can still learn from those who may seem disabled but have in reality a better understanding of life. Sometimes experiencing the hard ships of life helps, us grow and experience life in a different way than we normally would. It is like one who cannot see the forest for the trees. Work Cited Jan Zlotnik Schmidt, Lynne Crockett. “Portable Legacies: Raymond Carver’s ‘Cathedral’. “