Narrator Character Analysis in Raymond Carver's “Cathedral”
The narrator in the cathedral short story undergoes a series of transformations as the story develops. It can be determined that he is jealous of his wife’s past, especially the men she had contact with in the past. The narrator seems to be very fond of his wife and has an immense dislike for blind people. However, the narrator lacks the attitude of self-awareness, and his understanding of people is based on their physical perception. Therefore, he lacks the ability to connect with his wife as opposed to the blind visitor who connects well with his wife.
His interaction with the blind man puts on the path of seeing rather than looking, in that he starts to develop a deeper level of engagement with people. In the story, the narrator demonstrates the ability to look based on how he describes his wife and house and the blind man when he arrives at their house. He assumes that being blind makes one inferior because the person cannot be happy or have a normal life. Even though the blindman cannot see, he has a deeper understanding of people and attempts to emancipate the narrator from his figurative blindness. At the beginning of the story, the narrator is blind to his possibilities in his life; he cannot see who his wife is, or who the blind man is.
Therefore, in the end, he puts himself in the place of the blind man, and with the steps and understanding he had with the blind man, it can be deduced that he will be a transformed person. This is because he develops the attitude and the ability to engage with his environment in a more deeper level. It is possible for people to have such kind of transformation because experiencing something which was against his or her instincts. Just like the narrator opened to the blind man and empathized with him, he can experience a deeper engagement with the people around him even before they draw the cathedral. It is possible for people to have such transformations if they let themselves be taken through the paths of enlightenment. This is possible when one enters the interaction with the conduit of transformation with an open mind.
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