Once Was Blind, Now I See, Research Paper Example

The short story by Raymond Carver, entitled “Cathedral” involves a man and his wife during their time spent together with a blind man, Robert, during a brief visit to their home.  Robert was a friend of the narrator’s wife from a time over a decade ago when she read stories to him.  The narrator discusses his worries and uneasiness about the prospect of a blind man entering their home.  At first it appears as though the narrator is simply uneasy about a strange man coming to visit his wife, but he further unveils to the reader that he has very little knowledge about blind people and has no desire to meet one.  As the story reveals its climactic ending, the narrator gains a new sense of blindness and understands for a moment what it is to be in Robert’s position.  The author’s purpose in writing this short story is to educate the reader on the social biases against the blind, and to point out the troubles with not understanding the essence of blindness.

There are many instances where Carver has the narrator express his misunderstanding, biases, and unease of being in the company with a blind man throughout the short story.  In the following passage of the story, the narrator is describing Robert’s appearance and focuses on what seemed to be missing from his understanding of what a blind man would look like:

“But he didn’t use a cane and he didn’t wear dark glasses. I’d always thought dark glasses were a must for the blind. Fact was, I wish he had a pair. At first glance, his eyes looked like anyone else’s eyes. But if you looked close, there was something different about them. Too much white in the iris, for one thing, and the pupils seemed to move around in the sockets without his knowing it or being able to stop it. Creepy” (Carver).

The narrator is describing precisely what he believes to be the general appearance of a blind man.  Blind people should stereotypically wear glasses, have a guide dog or a cane and never laugh according to the narrator.  This allows the reader to share a glimpse of the narrator and understand exactly how he feels.  The “creepy” comment at the end of the passage shows that the overall appearance of Robert’s eyes are very disturbing to the narrator because they look different, move on their own without any real control, and are clearly visible to everyone.  This makes the narrator feel uncomfortable.  His discomfort of Robert visiting is not so much that he is an unfamiliar man visiting the narrator’s wife, but the narrator has never associated with the blind and is hesitant about the rules and socially accepted behaviors is visiting with a blind man.

A particularly interesting portion of the story came when the narrator’s wife was explaining to him the story about Robert’s wife and her death.  The description is not so much the interesting part as the narrator’s mental thoughts on the subject of how hard it must have been for both Robert and Beulah during such a difficult time.  He questions how difficult it must have been for Beulah never to have seen herself in Robert’s eyes, and how hard it must have been for Robert to have been married, slept with, and shared multiple experiences with his wife, but to never know what she looked like.  For the first time, the narrator put himself in Robert’s shoes and began to understand just how hard a simple marriage must be for someone that is blind.  It could be the author’s purpose of including this in the story so that the reader understands that in order to understand another person’s deficiencies and to avoid committing prejudiced thoughts and acts against them, it is important to first imagine how you would feel if the roles were reversed – the pain, frustration, and torment that being blind may cause you.

The narrator also discusses many behavior patterns that Robert exhibits that are a little different than what he thought a blind man would do.  The first, and most important, is Robert having a sense of humor, laughing and making jokes.  This behavior goes against the narrator’s prejudices and contradicts what he believes to be the behaviors of all blind people.  As Carver wrote, “my idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed” ( ).  It is clear that this passage is included into the story not only to show a prejudiced belief, but it defines one of the main sources of public bias and incorrect understanding of handicaps from the media, in this case the movies.  The narrator draws everything he knows about blind people from what he has seen on television or watched in the movies.  He has never met a blind person, or anyone with a true handicap, and this is a main cause for his problems relating to Robert in the early portion of the story.  He even felt weird when his wife left the two together when she changed clothes for bed.

Finally, in the climax the two men are working to come to terms on a description of what a cathedral would look like if Robert could see one.  The author writes that Robert has never seen many different things and he even makes a comment stating, “never thought anything like this could happen in your lifetime, did you, bub? Well, it’s a strange life, we all know that” (Carver).  I believe that Robert was speaking more about his own disbelief that he could be blind and the strangeness that he has experienced with his own life, than commenting on the narrator himself.  Never once does the author propose that Robert is happy to be blind or that blind individuals should be, in fact the previously mentioned stereotypes suggest the exact opposite.  As Robert and the narrator begin the draw the cathedral in the end, the narrator closes his eyes and for a short moment realizes what it may be like to experience life with his eyes closed to his surroundings, such as the impact of being blind.  He ultimately finds himself very calm and at peace with the experience that the story ends with the narrator refusing to open his eyes for just one moment more.

Carver’s short story is very interesting and helps shed light on a topic that many authors refuse to cover – physical handicap.  By using a much different writing style, Carver is able to examine the social, physical, and psychological impact that blindness has on the blind and their loved ones.  He also provides the reader insight on the social biases and prejudices that exist from movies, television, and other forms of media.  People are afraid of what they do not understand, and this is clearly the case for the narrator at the beginning of the story as he expressed his uneasiness of a blind man coming to visit.  Carver forces the reader to examine the issue from a different perspective and to understand how it would feel if we were blind.  Things would be very different in a blind world and we must have social empathy for the blind and do what we can to treat them as normal people without the unfortunate social biases that cast a poor image on the blind.  If not for the reader, then for the narrator his views on blindness were very dull and blind, but now he can see the topic and impact of blindness clearly.