Visual Imagery and Experiencing Blindness
...ing the story; then, at the finale the author casts aside the narrator’s aloofness making the last few lines of “Cathedral” incredibly vivid and intimate. A technique Carver uses that is unique to his story, is never naming the narrator or his wife; they are simply, “I” and “My wife” during the entire story. The blind character, Robert, is frequently referred to by name, although the narrator also refers to him as “the blind man” or “this blind man.” Carver uses this technique to make Robert, stand out from the story as his blindness stands out in the environment, while also portraying the narrator as detached, wary and fearful to associate with a blind man. Raymond Carver also utilizes deeply conflicted characters in “Cathedral” although the era is about fifty years after “The Blind Man” and modern conveniences like color television are readily available, while social standards have relaxed considerably. The narrator’s wife was formerly married to a military officer and they were transferred a great deal, which made her feel disconnected and lonely until one night she “swallowed all the pills and capsules in the medicine chest and washed them down with a bottle of gin” (275). After the suicide attempt she petitioned and received a divorce and eventually married the narrator, but the stability of their relationship is also questionable. The wife says to the narrator, “If you love me, you can do this for me. If you don’t love me, okay. But if you had a friend, any friend, and the friend came to visit, I’d make him feel comfortable” (275). This feeling of doubt and tension is kept to “looks” of irritation or dissatisfaction while Robert is around. Nothing is spoken aloud, but these soundless exchanges only emphasize the tension. Robert’s conflicts are never directly discussed but his visit is a side trip from seeing his recently deceased wife’s family, so the journey has been somber. Robert and his wife Beulah were inseparable for eight years, so he must feel great sadness at losing her. This pain only seems to manifest itself as chain smoking and a few off-hand comments like, “skeleton, I know about skeletons” (281). However, during the entire evening Robert never mentions his deceased wife and neither do the other characters. It’s as if death is even more uncomfortable than blindness. Throughout the “Cathedral” seven or eight rounds of cocktails are consumed and all the characters smoke “cannabis” although Robert professes it’s his first time. Alcohol and marijuana appear to play a large part of the recreational life in the narrator’s house, further suggesting deep-seated conflicts. The use of conflicted characters is one of the main similarities between stories, but the most important similarity is how both authors have at least one sighted character undergo the experience of being temporarily blind. It is through these acts the reader is drawn into the experience as well. D.H. Lawrence’s “The Blind Man” is rich with intimate details and more descriptive intensity than Carver’s “Cathedral.” This is evident as Lawrence weaves his characters experiences into the story with a more sensuous style. The best example is when Isabel Pervin goes to the barn at night during a storm to look for her blind husband Maurice, who is long overdue to return: Nothing came from the darkness. She knew the rain and the wind blew in upon the horses, the hot animal life. Feeling it wrong, she entered the stable, and drew the lower half of the door shut, holding the upper part close. She did not stir, because she was aware of the presence of the dark hind-quarters of the horses, though she did not see them, and she was afraid. Something wild stirred in her heart (61). Here we begin to see Isabel’s physical response to being unable to see: She stood motionless, waiting for him to come through the partition door. The horses were so terrifyingly near to her, in the invisible (62). D.H. Lawrence repeats the use of the word “invisible” starting at the beginning of the story when he describes Maurice’s newly blind existence, “With his wife he had a whole world, rich and real and invisible” (55), each time Lawrence uses “invisible” he emphasizes blindness, reminding readers to pay close attention to the events surrounding it. As the scene continues Isabel’s experience is pointedly detailed and gripping: The loud jarring of the inner door-latch made her start; the door was opened. She could hear and feel her husband entering and invisibly passing among the horses near to her, in the darkness as they were, actively intermingled. The rather low sound of his voice as he spoke to the horses came velvety to her nerves. How near he was, and how invisible! The darkness seemed to be in a strange swirl of violent life, just upon her. She turned giddy (62). The result of this brief journey into sightlessness casts the hope that Isabel who considers her husband “a terrible joy, and a terrifying burden” (56) might be enlightened as to what her husband’s world is like and lead her to have more compassion for him. Ironically, despite the vivid and emotional quality of the experience, Isabel fails to transcend her self-absorbed way-of-life and is not altered, although the reader is, as D.H. Lawrence intends. Blindness can cause a great deal of discomfort for many people both with and without sight. Discomfort and bias influence the plot in “Cathedral.” Raymond Carver is very direct: “Cathedral” is specifically designed to demonstrate how blindness can affect us in a single event. Carver’s intent hinges on the narrator. We never know what the narrator’s principle issues are, but in order to make the finale truly noteworthy, the author must give us deeper insight into his narrator’s evasive character. This happens incrementally throughout the story. At the beginning of “Cathedral” the narrator states his unease, “I wasn’t enthusiastic about [Robert’s] visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me” (274). These feelings are then revisited when Robert arrives: I’ve never met, or personally known, anyone who was blind. This blind man was late forties, a heavy-set, balding man with stooped shoulders, as if he carried a great weight there. … But he didn’t use a cane and he didn’t wear dark glasses. I’d always thought dark glasses were a must for the blind. Fact was, I wish he had a pair. At first glance his eyes looked like anyone else’s eyes. But if you looked close, there was something different about them. Too much white in the iris, for one thing, and the pupils seemed to move around in the sockets without his knowing it or being able to stop it. Creepy (277). The narrator is clearly uneasy and uneducated with regard to blind people. In contrast to the narrator, his nameless wife has been close friends with Robert “since she worked for him one summer” as an assistant and reader “in Seattle ten years ago” (274). Since that time she and Robert have continuingly recorded tapes detailing their lives and mailed them to each other although they have not seen each other since that time. A point of irony is that the narrator begins the story blind as to what kind of person Robert is and knows little about him, but Robert while blind, knows a great deal about the narrator and his relationship with his wife because of the tapes. The narrator’s experience with blindness begins with profuse discomfort but it ends with something quite different. As the evening draws to a close, the narrator and the Robert hang out by themselves, for the first time, in front of the television after the narrator’s wife falls asleep on the sofa: I said, “Are you tired? Do you want me to take you up to your bed? Are you ready to hit the hay?” “Not yet,” he said. “No, I’ll stay up with you bub. If that’s all right. I’ll stay up until you’re ready to turn in. We haven’t had a chance to talk. Know what I mean? I feel like me and her monopolized the evening.” “That’s all right,” I said. Then I said, “I’m glad for the company.” And I guess I was. Every night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep. My wife and I hardly ever went to bed at the same time. When I did go to sleep, I had these dreams. Sometimes I’d wake-up from one of them, my heart going crazy (280). For the first time we see the narrator as perhaps a tragic character hiding his undisclosed inner torment behind a defensive exterior, numbing his pain with a profuse consumption of alcohol and marijuana. The narrator becomes less annoyingly provincial and becomes a person to pity. As Robert and the narrator pass time, a program about cathedrals plays on the television and eventually, after a few awkward exchanges in which the narrator learns that Robert has never seen a cathedral and the narrator fails to be able to describe one, Robert asks: “Let me ask if you are in anyway religious? You don’t mind my asking?” I shook my head. He couldn’t see that, though. … “I guess I don’t believe in it. In anything. Sometimes it’s hard. You know what I’m saying?” “Sure, I do,” he said. … “The truth is, cathedrals don’t mean anything to special to me. Nothing. Cathedrals. They’re just something to look at on late-night TV. That’s all they are” (282). Carver leav...