The Theme Of Blindness In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

Throughout the story, Cathedral, by Raymond Carver, readers are shown the other side of blindness. In the world, one may assume that there is just one type of blindness- being sightless. “My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (Carver, 1). The meaning of blindness goes much deeper than that. Through the actions and words of a character, the husband in this short story, readers are shown how much ignorance, fear, and confusion one can have for someone who has literal blindness. All these negative feelings towards the blind man leads to the husband finding the blindness within himself.
“All this without his having seen what the goddamned woman looked like. It was beyond my understanding” (3). As the two men spend time together, the husband is able to step out of his comfort zone and realize that Robert is just like any other. He began to realize Robert has done more with his life than he had. This amazed, as well as confused him. What had he been spending all his life doing? And now he's going to look down to someone who has accomplished more than him? As the two men sat and watched television, there was a story that came on about cathedrals. Robert then asks the husband what a cathedral looks like. He finds all the words he can inside to scramble some descriptions together for the blind man. Robert then follows up the response with a request to draw a cathedral. “He found my hand, the hand with the pen. He closed his hand over my hand” (10). The two men found a connection as they drew hand in hand. The husband, then made the realization that he could learn a thing or two from the blind man. This was simply life