Cathedral by Raymond Carver - Essay Example

Symbolism in Raymond Carver’s The Cathedral Carver’s short story The Cathedral tells of a man’s awakening to the presence of God. It details the surprising process of a cynical man who, through having to play host to a blind man whom he fears because of his blindness, receives a vision of the possibility of a divine presence. This is accomplished throughout the course of an evening, and culminates in the cynical man’s union with both the blind man and with God, through the process of drawing a cathedral together on a paper bag.

The narrator begins by outlining his wife’s relationship to Robert, the blind man. Years before she and the narrator were married, his wife had a job as a reader and helper to Robert. She kept in touch with him by recording her thoughts and feelings onto tapes, a sort of auditory journal, which she would send to Robert on a regular basis. Robert would send tapes to her as well. The narrator feels threatened by this “ I heard my own name in the mouth of this stranger, this blind man I didn’t even know!

” While listening to the tape, they were interrupted, and the husband was relieved not to hear any more: “Maybe it was just as well. I’d heard all I wanted to.” His wife’s suicide attempt is related to Robert, who is a sort of father confessor to her. “Now this same blind man was coming to sleep in my house” the narrator says. “Maybe I could take him bowling” he tells his wife. She gets angry and tells her husband that the visit is important to her, and he will be a good host if she loves him.

She says she would do the same for him, but “you don’t have any friends.” Her husband’s isolation, both actual and spiritual, are shown in this statement. It is also illustrated by his need to party. The husband’s assessment of the Robert’s relationship with Beulah is “pathetic.” The husband’s fear shows in his use of humor and offensive remarks “Was his wife a Negro?” and in his dismissal of the blind man as pathetic. During the beginning of the visit, the narrator “ waited in vain to hear my name on my wife’s sweet lips.

But I heard nothing of the sort.” The husband is fearful and jealous of this intruder. As the evening wears on, the TV shows a program on cathedrals. Robert asks the narrator to describe a cathedral to him. His host tries, but feels he is coming up short. Robert “nodded, like he was trying to encourage me…In those olden days [the narrator tries to explain] …men wanted to be close to God.” Robert asks the husband if he is a religious man. The husband says no. “The blind man sat very still, his head down, as he listened to me.

” Then Robert asks the narrator to do him a “favor”, get some paper and together they would draw the cathedral. The bonding between the two men becomes more and more intense: “So we kept on with it. His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now.” The narrator, eyes closed, is entering a divine realm, where he feels, through drawing the cathedral, the presence of God. Robert says “I think that’s it. I think you got it…Take a look.

What do you think?” But the narrator keeps his eyes closed: “ I thought it was something I ought to do…my eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything” As the narrator says, “ It’s really something.” He means, I think, his experience of union with a divine power. Robert’s sharing with the narrator and his wife, breaking bread and partying with them, show Robert as a metaphor for Christ, as does his “booming” voice, and his beard.

Robert is accessible to the husband and wife, not holding himself superior to them, but really communing with them. The husband begins as fearful. When he lets his guard down to Robert (Christ) and draws the cathedral, symbolizing the presence of God, he has an awakening. He realizes that although he has been able to see all his life, in matters of the spirit, he was completely blind.