In a story entitled “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, a man and
his wife are visited by the old blind friend of the wife. The wife and this man,
whose name is Robert, have had a long history of a friendship ever since a
summer when she had worked for him. In the present of the story, Robert’s wife
had recently died and he asked the wife if he could visit her to catch up and meet
her husband, who is the nameless narrator of the story.
The narrator is skeptical about this old blind man, and is quite
obviously uncomfortable about the idea of Robert spending a night with them.
Over the course of the evening, the narrator and Robert do not talk much,
except for general small talk, until they are watching, or listening to, a late
night TV program about cathedrals.
During this program, Robert asks the narrator to describe a
cathedral for him, as he cannot see what the program is showing. The narrator
quickly found himself overwhelmed at this task, and tried in vain to describe a
cathedral to Robert. In a short time, the narrator apologizes to Robert for his
inability to describe a cathedral, and Robert then asks the narrator to find a
pen and some heavy paper.
After acquiring these items, Robert and the narrator draw a
cathedral together, bringing them together as friends through this shared
experience.
If one were to describe the characters, Robert could be described
as a kind, scholarly blind man that helps the narrator, who starts out as a untrusting,
if not cynical, man to realize there is more to life than just sights and
appearances. When the two men finish the drawing of the cathedral at the end of
the story, Robert tells the narrator to look at it, and the narrator describes
it as good, even though he never opens his eyes to look at the drawing; showing
that he does not need the sight of the drawing of the cathedral to realize the
importance of this experience.
The cathedral itself in the story could possibly be seen as
a symbol of a divine power, especially if looked at in the context of the
Medieval Era. So it could be seen in the story as a divine power that draws
these two men together.
Link to Raymond Carver's "Cathedral"
