If you were put in charge of a movie production about a person with blindness, what type of perceptions would you want to make sure are portrayed in your movie? What myths could you debunk? What stereotypes would you want to make sure to avoid? The importance of using their other senses to “see” what the world looks like. Those of us who can see are not aware of the importance of smell, and touch. We see with our eyes, while blind people see with their hands, ears, nose, etc. Blind people are not always unable to see everything. They can feel when the lights go lower, or the sun shines…
The book, All The Light We Cannot See By Anthony Doerr, is often described as a quite riveting novel to read. The book highlights many of the hardships which people experienced during World War II. The story takes place in Saint-Malo, France. Saint-Malo is a first described as peaceful and serene, but later on known as the epitome of destruction. The author showcases the epic destruction of civilizations throughout the book by using many unique writing techniques to engage the reader’s attention. To begin with, The author depicts the events in the novel through the perspective of a physically blind girl, Marie Laure, and a figuratively blind boy, Werner Pfennig. The book manages to effectively explain the life stories of the two main characters,…
Imagine waking up in the morning, opening your eyes and being greeted not with the familiarity of your bedroom ceiling, but with darkness. Naturally you’d be startled, but once you got past the initial shock, you’d be able conjure up an image of your bedroom from your imagination, clumsily bump your way through the room, and generally navigate through the house, right? Of course you would. The blind are not helpless, and can sometimes “see” more than we can. But wait- if you can’t see, how did you know where your bed was? Where the wall was? Or the door? Anthony Doerr, the author of All the Light We Cannot See, uses Marie-Laure, a young blind girl, to help illustrate one of the main themes in his book -that light and substance only truly exists in your head- with an extensive use of metaphors and descriptions.…
Annie Dillard wrote the essay “Seeing”, which is about the ability to change your perspective on the world around you. Throughout her essay, the author refers to objects such as blades of grass and the universe to demonstrate to her readers that many things are sometimes forgotten or not thoroughly thought about. The author uses themes such as the effect light and dark have on seeing, the difference between the natural obvious and the artificial obvious and the growth and change of perspective from childhood to adult hood to describe her perspective on seeing.…
"Cathedral" by Raymond Carver tells us short story about a blind man who comes to visit his friend and her husband. In the story, even though the husband can technically see and has a normal sight, in the beginning of the story he is the one who shows the signs of true "blindness" through inability to see Robert beyond his blindness, incapability to communicate with Robert, him feeling uncomfortable and acting awkward around Robert. The husband does not realize how Robert 's blindness changes him as human being. Carver skillfully shows the occurrence of change in the personality of the husband from being very awkward around a blind man to coming to realization that Robert is a person and not just a blind man. In the story, "Cathedral" Carver brings out the concept of husband 's spiritual blindness and the theme of broke marriage to shows what is wrong with the modern world.…
In Jorge Luis Borges’ piece from Ficciones, “Blindness” and Annie Dillard’s piece from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, “Seeing”, we read writers’ perspectices on their own blindness. The writers contradict the common fallacies our culture has about blindness with their own personal experiences. Although both writers portray blindness in a positive light, each writer uses his disability to enhance his lives differently. Borges depicts his loss of sight as an opportunity to learn new things about life and himself, while Dillard uses her blindness as a way to better appreciate nature.…
Living in a world of darkness is a constant struggle that can easily consume you. In one example of darkness, a man named John Hull developed cataracts at the age of thirteen and gradually lost his vision as he grew older. By the time he became fully blind, he wasn’t unable to visualize anything. Sacks stated that, “Hull meant not only the loss of visual images and memories but a loss of the very idea of seeing, so that concepts like “here,” “there,” and “facing” seemed to lose meaning for him, and even the sense of objects having “appearances,” visual characteristics vanished” (507). The darkness did not only consume him in a literal state, but also through the loss of his mind and thinking. Hull’s mind went into a state of complete darkness, a state where there was literally nothing he could imagine, nothing he could possibly envision. He lived in such a darkness that he could no longer even envision what the number three looked like in his mind (Sacks 507). Nafisi and her students also lived in complete darkness. The Iranian regime really had the women of the country in complete lockdown. Every aspect of life for women in Iran is controlled to the fullest. For one, a woman must wear black robes covering ones whole body. A Woman has to wear a covering over ones head,…
What it means to “see” another frequently depends on the maturity level of the viewer. This point is powerfully made by Raymond Carver in his short story “Cathedral” about a man who is navigating life “blind”, despite having normal vision. Carver tells his story using the husband’s point of view as the husband meets his wife’s long time friend, Robert, a man who , despite being physically blind, sees life clearly. The point of view in “Cathedral” greatly determines the plot of the story by showing how the husband is really the blind person instead of Robert—an epiphany which would not have been as powerful should it have been developed through the point of view of that of the wife or Robert.…
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.…
A persons ability to see is often taken for granted as it is in the story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver. Although the title hints that the story is about a cathedral, it is really about two men who are blind. one of the men is Robert, the blind friend of the narrators wife. The other is the narrator, the husband himself; he is psychologically blind. through the husbands words and actions when he is dealing with Robert, the blind man, it is shown that the husband doesn’t “see” or understand what Roberts blindness means and how it changes or doesn’t change him as a person. At first, Robert makes the husband feel very uncomfortable, for the husband doesn’t know what to say or do around the blind man. As the story progresses, we can see a change in the husband, he seems to be able to see Robert as a person and not just a blind man.…
If I was blind, I know I would miss the joy of seeing the words while reading, the beautiful sunsets, my husband’s smile, and the constellations when camping. If I was without my hearing, I would miss out on music, which touches my heart and gives me bliss. I would miss the sense of smell the least, only because it is sensitive right now and can trigger a migraine; sadly, it would cause my taste to be affected. Many cultures see the loss of senses as handicaps that lessen a person. If I was without all external stimulation, it would be a very closed off world for me, especially if I lost my senses as an adult, but I don’t think it would make me less of a person.…
To be blind can mean many things. The effects of those who are not literally blind, but who cannot see through the haze of perspective concepts developed by society, such as the issue of discrimination or social status, are often negative and cause misguided behavioral actions by individuals. Authors, such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison, use the motif of blindness that makes their literary characters prejudice, and indicates a lack of understanding which binds them to set fates of death, downfall, and destruction, outlining the effect that divided society has on an individual. In Thomas C. Fosters novel, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines, he talks about the reasons behind authors purposes of choosing to use blindness as a long lasting motive in their works of literature: “Clearly the author wants to emphasize other levels of sight and blindness beyond the physical.…
Sometimes we have to look beyond what we see on the outside to understand something more deeply. In the short story Cathedral By Raymond Carver, the narrator has an attitude of being selfish, and jealous through the story. The narrator’s wife invites a blind man, Robert, to come stay in their house for a short time while the man visits family members of his own wife who recently passed. The narrator is not enthusiastic because blind people make the narrator uncomfortable, mainly because the narrator has no real experience with the blind. In addition, to his uneasiness with the blind the narrator is uncomfortable with the relationship his wife and the blind man have. The wife and Robert, the blind man, have maintained a close relationship via tape recordings mailed back and forth. Despite the narrators feelings about the visit, Robert shows up, and the three of them dine together. By the end of the story the narrator begins to understand and accept Robert and his blindness. In the short story Cathedral, Carver uses binary oppositions of blindness versus the seeing to show the theme of ignorance through the first person’s narrator’s journey from insecurity to openness.…
A proverb in the Bible says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” This has become very meaningful to me as I consider the importance of college, and what I hope to do after college. The word “vision” is defined as a supernatural appearance that surveys a revelation. After reading “The Country of The Blind” and reflecting back on my life, I realized that I am who I am mostly because of the environment I grew up in. One of the most important applications of vision for me has been in my personal education. Right when I was able to run and jump, I followed my mother everywhere she went, most of the time unwanted.…
In life, we sometime fail to see the bigger picture because there are too many things happening at the same time and we are trying to absorb everything in an instance. Like Lear in Shakespeare’s he was blinded by dementia which caused him to make irrational decisions, when Gloucester lost his sight, he managed to see the truth which was right before his eyes all these while. Blindness can be a gift of darkness, it allows you to settle down and focus only on your own thoughts. It helps heighten your senses and enables you to probe deeper than just the surface meaning.…