Reflection on Cathedral by Raymond Carver

Cathedral

Prior to the reflection, there is need to provide a brief summary of this wonderful short story.

Robert, who is blind, went to visit his wife’s family after her death. As the narrator’s wife lived nearby the place Robert was going to, he decided to visit her as well. She worked for him in the past; they always kept in touch by sending tapes to each other about their lives. Because of the good friendship Robert had with the narrator’s wife, the narrator felt jealous and upset once he realized that Robert was going to his house. He discriminated him by calling him “the blind man”, and he also judged him based on his disability. All in all, he was being a jerk when talking about him. Fast forward to the night where Robert gets to the house, the narrator was impressed by the appearance of “the blind man”. He had a long bear and was not wearing glasses as he thought. As the night was passing by, the narrator got even more impressed by Robert. Despite his disability, Robert drank, smoke, and could even tell that TV they were watching was one in color. By the end of the night, the image of a cathedral was on TV, so Robert asked the narrator to describe it for him. The narrator had a hard time describing it, hence, Robert asked him to draw it.  Robert puts his hand on the narrator’s hand in order to guide him when drawing.  Later, Robert asked the narrator to close his eyes to finish the drawing. At the end, Robert told him to open his eyes to look at the drawing, but the narrator just said “it’s really something” without opening his eyes.

I felt really related to this story after I read it; it reminded me of a similar experience I had in the past.

 Most of the time, we judge people without even getting to know them. On my first day of high school, there was this guy whose name was Axel. He looked pretty different from the rest of the class. I did not like him because I thought he was very arrogant and cocky. Every time any of my classmates asked me about him, I would describe him as the worst person I had ever seen in my life. I was being mean and rude towards him just like the narrator of “Cathedral” was being with the blind man. Likewise, the narrator, I had built my own opinion about this guy. Little did I know I would become best friend with him. By the end of the first month, our teacher left an assignment to be worked in groups. To my surprise, I was assigned to work with Axel. The first time we reunited to start working on the project, I was being really hostile to him. As we kept on reuniting to make progress in our work, I realized that Axel was a totally different person from what I thought when I first saw him.  I was surprised by the good qualities he had. He was kind, intelligent, humble, and he had similar interests to mine. Surprisingly, we ended up creating a strong bond and being good friends. Up to now, we keep on having a great friendship. This little story of mine reminds me on how antagonistic the narrator was with Robert at first, and how they ended up having a good time that they even drew a Cathedral together.