Blindness In Raymond Carver's In The Cathedral

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A motif is an idea or concept that is constant through out literary work. In the Cathedral by Raymond Carver we saw through the eye of the narrator. He thought he had an advantage over his blind house guest Robert; a dear friend of his wife because he could actually see unlike Robert. The motif of blindness is used to express the narrator stereotype, jealousy, arrogance, and lack of knowledge of blindness. Robert was the person born with the “disability” of blindness but was able to see far more than the narrator had possible seen in his entire life. The narrator had this idea in his mind about Robert before he even met him. All he knew he was this blind man who had lost his wife just recently and kept in contact with the narrator wife for the past ten years was on his way to his house. What possible could he and a blind man have in common? According to Carver (p. 299) “ My idea of blindness came from the movies.” Here you have a grown man with a wife saying he gets ideas from the movies and stereotypes all blind people. Carver (p. 299) “In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. I find it hard to believe that the narrator had not come into contact with anyone blind before. Maybe he but never…show more content…
Here you have a man that his wife once work for over ten years ago, you would have thought the contract was terminated. However they kept in contact all that time. “She hadn’t seen him since she worked for him one summer in Seattle ten years ago. But she and the blind man had kept in touch. They made tapes and mailed them back and forth. I wasn't enthusiastic about his visit.” (Carver in Gardener, Lawn, Ridl, & Shakel, 2013, p. 299) He didn't quite understand that this blind man kept his wife entertained, gave her personal time that he never saw to give. He was annoyed and the presence this blind man had in his wife’s life. Carver ( p.300) “She told him everything, or so it

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