Looking vs. Seeing in Carver's "Cathedral"

"Cathedral," one of Raymond Carver's landmark short stories, is haunting and beautiful in its quotidian setting. The story's narrator embodies modern consumerist society's mistrust of the metaphysical.  Disenchanted with life, he is the armchair critic -  too disillusioned to be satisfied, but too complacent to seek further fulfillment.  In his world, faith and God are antiquated relics and passion for life is mere melodrama. He is subjected to a visit from his wife's old friend, Robert, whom he is prejudiced against because he is blind. Throughout the course of the story, the narrator progresses through stages of opposition, understanding, and finally, enlightenment.  Despite the narrator's prejudices against Robert, it is ironically the blind man who teaches him to see. 

The narrator's idea of blindness "came from the movies. [...] Blind men moved slowly and never laughed." "His being blind bothered" the narrator and he "wasn't enthusiastic" about the visit.  His prejudices and misconceptions are challenged as he spends time around Robert.

• It surprises and entertains the narrator that the blind man was once married. "They'd married, lived and worked together, slept together [...] and then the blind man had to bury her. All this without having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked like.  It was beyond my understanding." 
• The narrator is flabbergasted by the fact that the blind man has a beard. He notes, "The blind man, feature this, he was wearing a full beard! A beard on a blind man! Too much, I say."  Throughout the story, Robert periodically, "lifted his beard slowly and let it drop."
• He is taken aback when Robert starts smoking because he "remembered having read somewhere that the blind didn't smoke because [...] they couldn't see the smoke they exhaled."  But the blind man "smoked his cigarette down to the nubbin and then lit another one."

In each of these instances, the narrator assumes sight is of principle importance and finds it difficult to understand how each could occur without it. To him, it's preposterous to have a romantic relationship with someone you've never seen, to wear a beard even though you don't know what it looks like, and smoke cigarette's when you can't see the smoke. However, the blind man doesn't need to see his wife to love her, to see his beard to find satisfaction in it or to see his exhaled smoke to enjoy smoking.

In addition to his prejudices against Robert for being blind, the narrator is also distant from his wife and disenchanted with her acknowledgement of the transcendental. (Blog post on their relationship to come.) On her last day working for Robert years ago, Robert asked the narrator's wife if he could touch her face. "She agreed to this.  She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose - even her neck! She never forgot it. She even tried to write a poem about it. She was always trying to write a poem."  He then says, "I can remember I didn't think much of the poem. [...] Maybe I just don't understand poetry."

The narrator's lack of appreciation for the impact this had on his wife and his disinterest in poetry, serve to highlight his grapple with the metaphysical world. However, the narrator progressively shifts from a state of opposition to one of understanding as he, his wife and Robert share a meal, smoke cigarettes and drink Scotch together, breaking down the barriers of prejudice the narrator has against Robert.  The three eventually wind up sitting on the couch together, running out of things to say, when the narrator's wife leaves to change clothes and he and the blind man are left alone. The narrator concedes that he's "glad for the company" and turns on the TV.  A show about cathedrals comes on.

As the two sit and talk, the man offers the following commentary on the tv show to Robert: "In those olden days, when they built cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God. In those olden days, God was an important part of everyone's life.  You could tell this from the cathedral building."  When Robert asks him if he is religious, he replies, "I guess I don't believe in it. In anything. Sometimes it's hard."  Robert then asks the narrator to describe what a Cathedral looks like. The narrator makes an attempt but struggles and gives up, saying his attempt was the best he could do.

Patient but unsatisfied, Robert asks the narrator to find some thick paper and a pen and draw a cathedral. The narrator concedes and soon the two are "cooking with gas," side-by-side, as the narrator draws a cathedral. Robert places his hand on the narrator's so he can feel the cathedral being drawn. He then asks him to close his eyes. When the drawing is finished, he asks him to look at it and tell him what he thinks. With his eyes still closed, knowing he is home but feeling like he is nowhere, the narrator says, "It's really something."

Through this experience, the narrator is pushed to reach out of the post-modernist world of doubt and suspicion he lives in and into the realm of the abstract and the transcendental.  With the blind man's help, he progresses from a state of understanding to enlightenment. His prejudices have been eased. His mistrust has been softened. Ironically, it is the blind man who really sees and the seeing man who has been living in the dark.