Raymond Carver Cathedral Summary

“Cathedral” by Raymond Carver is set in 1983 in the narrator’s house somewhere In New York. The story starts with the narrator telling us about his wife’s old friend that was blind. The narrator tells us about how the blind man’s wife had died. The blind man then contacted the narrator’s wife. Arrangements were made and then the blind man was coming to spend the night at the narrators house. He would come to New York from his in laws in Connecticut by a 5-hour train ride. The blind and the wife always kept in touch by sending tapes back and forth. The narrator wasn’t happy about his visit and the fact about him being blind bothered him. The narrator then tells us how the blind man and his wife know each other. One summer his wife was in Seattle
and needed a job and her fiancé was in officer training and didn’t have money either. So, the blind man gave her a job. She worked for him all summer reading everything for him and organizing his office. They became good friends. And on her last day in the office the blind man asked if he could touch her face.
She never forgot it and even wrote poems about it. She then got married to her fiancé and they moved to an air force base in Alabama. She called the blind man and they talked. He then told her to send tapes to him about her life. So, she did exactly that, she sent a tape many times and told him about everything. She even told him about how she tried to overdose on pills, how she divorced her husband and even about her first date with the narrator. Then the narrator fast forwards and is talking in present time. His wife asks if he’d like to listen to the tape where she first mentioned him, and he said yes. As he listened, he hears the blind man a man he never even met before, talking about him. Before they could finish the tape, someone knocks on the door and they never got a chance to finish it. Later before his wife went to go pick up the blind man the narrator made some blind jokes. His wife then reacted with anger reminding him that the blind mans wife, Beulah just died. Then the narrator asks if she was a negro and his wife reacted in anger. He then goes on a rant talking about how pathetic Beulah is and how pathetic she must feel because her husband never seen her nor could he every complement
her. The blind then arrives to the house with the narrator’s wife. Then we’re given his name man which is Robert. They then eat and enjoy dinner. The narrator’s wife leaves to go change and then they narrator and Robert smoke some weed together. The Wife comes back smokes once and then goes to sleep on the couch. The narrator then sees a cathedral on the tv which makes him ask Robert if knows what a Cathedral is. Robert then asks him to explain and the narrator was having trouble describing it. So, what he did was compare it to other things which Robert didn’t know about either. Then Robert tells him to go get some paper and a pen and just draw it. The narrator runs around to find a paper and pen and he does. He comes back sits next to him and draws a picture of the cathedral. While drawing it his wife wakes up in curiosity of what’s going on she asked what they were doing. So the blind man told her that they were drawing a cathedral. As he drew the picture Robert told him to do it with his eyes closed. So, he did, the narrator kept drawing and then Robert felt across the paper and he said, “I think you got it, take a look” but the narrator kept his eyes closed. Robert then asked him “Are you looking” and the narrator replied saying “it’s really something”.