The Blind Shall See

The Blind Shall See:

In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” the narrator learns that stereotypes and first impressions can render one blind.  Sometimes it is hard to look past these prejudgments to see a person’s true character.  At first our narrator struggles with what he thinks he should see.  He doesn’t want to be taught a lesson; he doesn’t want to learn anything new.  He’ll be nice for his wife’s sake, but he doesn’t have to enjoy himself.  Through the course of the evening he gradually lets his reservations go.  He goes from prejudice, to tolerance, and finally to acceptance for the blind man. Only after he takes a risk and steps out of his comfort zone can he really make the important connection.  In this moment he has his epiphany that changes the way he thinks.

            Before Robert comes to visit the narrator has very clear ideas of what being blind means.  Blind people wear glasses, walk with canes, and they most certainly don’t have beards.  He feels bad for the blind man, figuring it must be a terrible thing to have such a handicap.  He imagines how Robert must live and the insecure woman his wife must have been for marrying a blind man.  Before the blind man even walks into the house, he shatters the image that the narrator had created.  The narrator himself is blind in the way that he can’t look past what he had been taught to believe.  He isn’t prepared for what he sees. It unnerves him that the blind man doesn’t wear dark glasses.  As the narrator looks into his eyes, he notices that Robert’s “pupils [seem] to move around in the sockets without his knowing it or being able to stop it”.  To the narrator, this is creepy.  He remembers reading somewhere that blind men don’t smoke, surely something written in black and white must be true.  But Robert even proves that wrong.

            After dinner and after his wife falls asleep, the narrator starts to adjust to having Robert around, but he is just tolerant.  He talks to the blind man, and eventually he becomes comfortable conversing over the television.  The narrator then realizes to his astonishment that he is actually “glad for the company”.  He begins to feel genuine empathy, in contrast to the pity he had felt before, when the thought occurs to him that Robert probably doesn’t even know what a cathedral truly is.  Roberts asks him to describe one, and the narrator doesn’t know how to describe something to a blind man.  He tells Robert about the physical characteristics of cathedrals that “they’re big.  They’re built of stone. Marble, too, sometimes”.  Robert could never understand a description of this type, but he doesn’t let the narrator give up.  Both of them will see something new before the night is through.  Robert will see a cathedral for the first time, and the narrator will truly see Robert.

            Finally, when the idea comes to draw a cathedral together, the narrator’s eyes are opened to the world his guest experiences daily and he truly accepts Robert for who his is.  The narrator doesn’t initially know how drawing will help the blind man understand, but he feels a bond forming and tries anyway.  Robert wants to help the narrator let go of his limitation, he wants the narrator to learn the way Robert has always been taught.  Hand-in-hand they draw, and the narrator starts to understand. He can’t stop.  Robert recognizes that the inner struggle the narrator had been fighting and sees that his host is changing: “You didn’t think you could.  But you can, can’t you?”.  Robert is not only referring to the narrator’s ability to draw, but that he has finally taken down the barriers blocking his view.  The narrator can finally see.

            The narrator’s vision clears. It goes from blind prejudice, to foggy tolerance, and finally to an accepting clarity. When he feels the connection he has made with Robert he knows that something important is happening to him.  The two of them are close beside each other and the narrator can feel himself changing.  He is having a very sacred experience and it’s “like nothing else in [his] life up to now”.  Despite his earlier intentions to only please his wife, the narrator finds that he is completely accepting and comfortable with Robert.  He discovers something profound, a lesson he had never even realized he needed, and this discovery changes him. He finally is able to see through his unfair stereotypes to see the real person behind the handicap. He is only able to do this when his takes a risk and closes his eyes.