Cathedral- Raymond Carver

The short story  "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver is a story about a closed mined, uncomfortable man, coming to life and feeling things he has never felt before with the help of a blind man. Carver opens the story with a slight cynical tone about Robert coming to visit. The main character is very un comfortable with the fact a blind person is staying in the house. He says "I wasn't enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me." He almost treated him as if he had a contagious disease. He was also very judgmental and asking uncomfortable questions to the blind man about his perception of things, when overall he perceived things better than the main character. But his wife scorned him and made sure he treated the guest well the entire visit. She would throw him mean looks if she felt that he was being disrespectful. There was major drug and alcohol abuse in the story that solidifies the drug abuse of the current times. The main character was not happy in his life, he did not like his job or anything in his life. He could not feel anything and he had nothing to believe in. After the wife went to sleep the males had bonding time. The blind man was going to make the husband feel something he had never felt before. He made him close his eyes and become blind and draw a picture of a cathedral. This opened the mind of the main character and changed his view on everything. The main character thought he was teaching the blind when in actually the blind was teaching him, irony. At the end of the story he does not even want to open his eyes as stated in " My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But i didn't feel like I was inside anything." He feels what the blind man feels now. He is no longer uncomfortable because he had walked in the blind man's shoes. Raymond Carver uses very simplistic language in the story with short words, sentences and dialogue. It is for anyone to understand the tension and emotion written in the story.