Real World Exposed In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

Hunter Bullock The genre of short stories are used to draw a short narrative without going as in depth with details or characters like a novel would and instead focus on a small cast of characters and said story which is often used to symbolize real world applications. The author Raymond Carver is very proficient in illustrating a world in a short story while infusing real world applications and issues into a story while not directly addressing said theme. In “Cathedral” Raymond Carver uses the narrator, the husband, to illustrate the aversion many people have toward the disabled community. Carver uses the narrator to exhibit common behaviors people in the real world have toward the disabled, such as avoiding contact. The husband exhibits this kind of behavior when the blind man asks the husband to draw a cathedral while he holds onto his hands while he draws it. He also shows some kind of disgust when his wife tells him she let the blind man touch her face many years before. Carver makes the husband behave in this way not to simply show how much he hates the blind man at first but to show the reader some of the common behaviors people have and do around
The story was about how a husband’s hatred towards a blind man changes once he sees things through his eyes but through deep analysis you can argue he uses the husband to show the emotions people have when it comes to people who are different, most notably toward the disabled community. Back when this was written the issue was a bigger deal for the disabled but they still experience preconceived notions, aversions, and sometimes feel feared by others. For this reason exactly this is why Raymond Carver wrote “Cathedral” and he writes clearly enough to allow the reader to see this deeper meaning and reevaluate their own