“Cathedral” by Raymond Carver was an interesting story that had a very ambiguous point. The biggest thing that stood out to me throughout the entire story is the constant judgments and assumptions made by the husband narrator. From the very first page, this man is determined to keep his negative opinion of the blind man only because of the fact that he is blind. It bothers me greatly when people hate anything that they’ve never have had experience with. So, I went through the rest of the story not liking the close-minded narrator. Later on, he assumes that the blind man’s wife is a woman of color because her name is Beulah. When he asks his wife about Beulah’s race, the wife is dumbfounded by the unexpected and irrelevant question. Why does it matter? When the husband finally meets the blind man, he is amazed by how little this man reinforces the stereotypes the husband has learned in movies. Examples of these stereotypes include having dark classes and using a cane to get around. I love how when the husband is finally warming up to the blind man once they spend more time together without the wife. Even more, that the husband feels like he cannot explain a cathedral to the blind man successfully and the blind man leads him through another mode of describing something and it really opens his eyes to how this blind man experiences the world without sight. However, the story progresses and then the husband becomes more and more aware of the reality of what’s going on in more than physical sight.
