The Theme Of Blindness In Raymond Carvers Cathedral

In Raymond Carver’s â€Å"Cathedral† the narrator is seen to show ignorance and bias towards blindness throughout the story, however towards the end he realizes his flaws and the difference between looking and seeing. From the beginning of the story to the end you can see a change within the narrator after his encounter with the blind man. At the end of Raymond Carver’s â€Å"Cathedral† the narrator hopes to accomplish a change in his understanding of himself, and his experience with Robert flickers this change towards the end of the story. The narrator in the â€Å"Cathedral† displays a lack of insight and self-awareness that, in many ways, makes even him blinder than Robert. The narrator is shown to have trouble understanding the thoughts and†¦show more content†¦Say my life was being threatened by an insane guy who said I had to do it or else.† (Carver 43). This moment in story allows the narrator to finally try to comprehend the greater meaning of life by him closing his eyes and drawing a cathedral with Robert. This moment is a further showing of the narrator’s change, in the beginning he was bitter towards Robert due to his bias against blindness, but this moment allows him to understand Robert and show change. The ending of the â€Å"Cathedral† does not exactly show what happens after the events that unfolded. The â€Å"Cathedral† doesn’t show what the narrator has accomplished towards the ending, but does show a spark of change within him. As the narrator keeps his eyes closed even after Robert tells him to open them this further explains what the narrator is experiencing. The narrator’s meeting with Robert allowed him to listen for once and develop a sense of compassion for the blind and eliminate his bias. The narrator also loses his sense of jealousy for Robert, as he was jealous of Robert since he was so close to his wife. Since the narrator really didn’t kn ow his wife he developed insecurities within himself and any situation that deals with her that can be seen when the narrator as he just categorizes Robert as another person apart of her past. When he leaves his eyes closed this allows the narrator to truly see as he was â€Å"blind† to compassion and what the world was really made of. It allowed him toShow MoreRelatedCharacter Analysis Of Raymond Carver s Cathedral 1426 Words   |  6 PagesCharacter Analysis in Raymond Carver’s â€Å"Cathedral†: The Narrator Literature has the potential to act as a mirror by presenting people’s lived experiences, expectations, and perceptions through characters. Such is what can be deciphered through the analysis of different characters in Raymond Carver’s story â€Å"Cathedral.† This paper focuses on the narrator of the story portrayed by the author as blind, which is used metaphorically not to imply physical blindness, but the inability to have reasonedRead MoreRaymond Carver’s â€Å"Cathedral† vs. Tess Gallagher’s â€Å"Rain Flooding Your Campfire†1575 Words   |  7 PagesRaymond Carver’s â€Å"Cathedral† and Tess Gallagher’s â€Å"Rain Flooding your Campfire† are good examples of intertextual dialogue between two writers. These two stories show us how two writers can grow and develop short stories differently from the same experience. There are similarities between the stories, such as the use of a first person narrat or, the plot, setting, and also there is an interchange between the narrator and the blind man in both stories. But within these similarities there are alsoRead MoreAn Analysis Of Cathedral By Raymond Carver1441 Words   |  6 Pages Cathedral Research Paper The short story â€Å"Cathedral†, by Raymond Carver, is a thought provoking piece that focuses on the transition a man goes through to see the world with his soul. The story gives hope that people can change if given the chance to be better people. Over the course of the story, Carver uses both diction and description to explore themes in religion and morality. â€Å"Cathedral† depicts a husband and a wife as they prepare and entertain a friend of the wife. The husband, the narratorRead MoreCathedral Raymond Carver Analysis1212 Words   |  5 PagesIn â€Å"Cathedral,† Carver’s use of visualization and climactic change of character emphasizes the theme that looking and seeing are two very different things. When Raymond Carver had his wife’s blind friend, Robert, join them for a few days, he should’ve been more understanding and empathetic with Robert’s blindness instead of just avoiding it or brushing it off as if it’s not there. Carver did very well in changing his ways and learning to accept and understand Robert. Carver also did a good job ofRead MoreThe Two Sides Essay1379 Words   |  6 PagesThe Two Sides The views we have are what shapes us, sometimes we have vast knowledge of ideas. Other times we are limited in what we can understand. We are given the choice of seeking out more of said idea or choosing to remain as is. Cathedral by Raymond Carver is a story that gives us a look into what it is like to have our views challenged through experiencing them first hand. We are introduced to the story by narration and we are given a brief summary of how his wife and the blind man hadRead MoreAnalysis Of `` Cathedral `` By Raymond Carver920 Words   |  4 PagesRaymond Carver’s unnamed narrator in â€Å"Cathedral† provides a first-person point of view. This perspective opens a clear window into the feelings, attitudes, and the isolation of the unnamed narrator. The narrator’s tone of voice reveals his feelings and personality. This contributes to the story’s themes because the reader comes to understand things that the narrator never directly or deliberate ly reveals; as a result, the reader comes to empathize with the narrator more deeply. Isolation and lonelinessRead MoreAnalysis Of Raymond Carver s Cathedral 1340 Words   |  6 PagesRaymond Carver’s characters were considered to be very much like him: â€Å"’on the edge: of poverty, alcoholic self-destruction, loneliness† (Mays 32). His short story â€Å"Cathedral† is about a young couple, who have a visitor coming to stay with them. This visitor, Robert, is the wife’s friend, and he is blind. The narrator, the husband, has never met someone who is blind, was bothered by that. To him, being blind meant constantly needing help from others. His depiction of blindness was what he has seenRead MoreThe Blind Man In Raymond Carvers Cathedral701 Words   |  3 PagesRaymond Carver’s short story â€Å"Cathedral† shows the interaction of two men, one physically blind and one prejudiced, with contrasting personalities. Overall, the story i llustrates how having a closed mind is much more debilitating than permanently closed eyes. Carver tends to revolve his stories around the bleak lives of middle class members and the situations they face; this could be due to his personal life as an alcoholic, who struggled to support his family. â€Å"Cathedral† embodies certain aspectsRead MoreCathedral: Blindness of the Non-Blind Essay1239 Words   |  5 Pageslifestyles and physical disabilities of others as well. However, sometimes it just takes a life changing moment for one to realize that he or she should not discriminate against others just because of their appearance or beliefs. In the story â€Å"Cathedral†, author Raymond Carver writes about a man who is prejudging towards his wife’s blind friend, Robert, who will be visiting the couple. At first the narrator, or â€Å"Bub† as Robert nicknamed him, does not like the idea of Robert staying there because he is blindRead MoreThemes In The Cathed ral By Raymond Carver1158 Words   |  5 Pagesâ€Å"The Cathedral† by Raymond Carver is an eye opening short story which focuses on an unnamed narrator who has a hard time interacting with the world around him, specifically his new visitor. The narrator is the perfect example of an antihero as he is the central character, but does not exhibit heroic attributes. In this first-person narrative, the narrator speaks of when his wife’s old friend, Robert, comes to visit. After Robert’s wife passes on, he stops by the narrator’s house for a night while

University of Nairobi Bsc. Civil Engineering Degree...

17/07/2012 University of Nairobi - Degree Programmes University of Nairobi A world-class univ ersity committed to scholarly excellence Search Website Quick Links Faculties/Schools/Institutes About UON Academics Admission Student Life Research Contact Us Home Academics Degree Programmes Degree Information Degree Regulation A-Z List of UON Departm ets a b c d e f g h ijklmn o p q r s t u v w x y z B.sc. (civil Engineering) Degree Code: F16 Duration: 5 Faculty/School/Institute offered: SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING Regulations Introduction General Regulations Course Outline Course Description Further Information Entry Requirements Course Description FIRST YEAR OF STUDY - SEMESTER I FCE 101 - Communication Skills (45 hrs) For†¦show more content†¦Number systems, codes, arithmetic and logic operations: Computer number systems and computer codes, arithmetic operations and computer logic operations, introduction to binary number representation, positive and negative numbers, arithmetic operators and examples, ones-and twos-complement, binary subtraction, addition, multiplication, division, real numbers (floating point), strings, arrays. Applications software: Introduction, software packages, selection of software (factors to consider), wordprocessors (e.g. Wordstar), spreadsheets (e.g. Lotus), report generators (e.g. Harvard Graphics), accounting packages (e.g. Dac Easy). Computer graphics (e.g. CAD packages e.g. Autocad), (to be covered through laboratory exercises). Application Software : Packages: wordprocessing, spreadsheets, database management, mathematical programming, statistics (tabulations and regression), project management. Software developments: knowledge-based systems (A.I.) FCE 181 - Chemistry IA (45 hrs) Inorganic Chemistry: Solubility, precipitation, ion-exchange, nitrification and denitrification, oxidation-reduction reactions, absorption, characteristics and significance of some salts and elements (ammonia, nitrates, phosphates, sulphates, silicates, chlorine, oxygen, ozone, carbon, etc.) Physical Chemistry: Ions in solution, ionization energy, chemical energetics and bonding, chemical equilibrium, reaction kinetics. SEMESTER II FCE 104 - Elements ofShow MoreRelatedContemporary Issues in Management Accounting211377 Words   |  846 PagesManagement Accounting Edited by ALNOOR BHIMANI 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic FranceRead MoreAn Impact Assessment of Science and Technology Policy on National Development of Nigeria61708 Words   |  247 Pagesii AN IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY ON NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF NIGERIA BY ABUBAKAR ABDULLAHI (MATRICULATION NO. 3081) A Dissertation Submitted to St. Clements University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award of Doctor of Philosophy in Management St. Clements University October, 2004 iii DECLARATION I declare that this Dissertation is an output of my own research endeavours. In pursuant of this research work, concerted efforts were made to duly

The First of Its Kind Free Essays

The First of Its Kind I still remember being in an eighth grade U. S. History class back in my Junior high years. We will write a custom essay sample on The First of Its Kind or any similar topic only for you Order Now One distinct memory of that course, perhaps the most memorable of all the projects we had, came in the first month of the school year, in the curriculum’s first unit: the founding of the United States as its own nation. As the textbook timeline approached 1787 we prepared ourselves for a daunting task: memorize and recite the Preamble. We as students would wait anxiously as, one by ne, each of our peers would step up to the front of the classroom and begin to recite from memory. Few people could recite the Preamble smoothly, but for those who stumbled, we all seemed to remember perfectly the first and last chunks: â€Å"We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union†¦ † and â€Å"†¦ do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. To us back in eighth grade, that missing middle section was Just a group of words to be more-or-less forgotten the next day. To our forefathers, however, that middle section was vital in reating the basis for the supreme law of the United States. Much like my peers and I in the eighth grade, our forefathers who assembled 226 years ago were faced with a daunting task for the state that they were in. At this point in our history, America was a newborn in the world, only eleven years of age. Now left without the common cause that the Revolutionary War provided for the prior two decades, the former colonies struggled to find any sense of unity, and the world watched like adults watching an infant not their own attempt to stand upright on two feet without any assistance. Or perhaps a better metaphor would be an infant attempting to stand on his hands; Americans not only had to erect a lasting government system, but create one unlike any other. But the United States was by no means hopeless. Our founding fathers had already put forth one attempt with the Articles of Confederation, which ultimately resulted in a loose confederation of thirteen independent states. The Articles did provide a Congress, but the provision was a handicapped version created without any real command over the states. And this was purposely so – instead of taking a radical leap of faith into a new republic, he Articles laid a steppingstone towards the Constitution so as not to provoke the states, fresh from a revolution. This steppingstone of compromise is what I believe to be the basis of the thought process behind the Constitution. Soon after the Articles of Confederation were adopted, a convention was summoned to meet in Philadelphia to revise the Articles in response to the recent problems, such as portrayed in Shays’ Rebellion. When the fifty-five delegates assembled, however, it became clear that the Articles had to be scrapped for a new Constitution. To effectively describe in one ord the discussion that happened behind the closed doors of the Pennsylvania State House during that long summer of 1787: compromise. The delegates, most of whom had Just recently rebelled against their mother country, wouldn’t be shaken very easily in their ideas and proposals for how the government should conduct, and compromise became a necessity. So much so that one of the biggest achievements of the Constitutional Convention was called the â€Å"Great Compromise†, creating a middle ground to please botn the large and small states, whose ideas ot representation harply contrasted. Many other compromises defined the convention: the Electoral College was a compromise between direct and indirect presidential election, and the Three-fifths Compromise effectively represented the nation’s view of slavery (and prevented an eventual collapse of the convention due to debate over the humanity of slavery). By September 17, 1787, the first draft of the Constitution was finalized, signed, and sent out to be ratified by the states. A major problem that echoed the notion of compromise soon arose as the first draft was sent out to the states. American people began to side with either Federalists or Antifederalists, who lobbied against each other over whether this Constitution was worthy of ratification. The greatest weapon that the Antifederalists held was the lack of a bill of rights stating the rights and freedoms that an American citizen were to have. And thus another compromise was hammered out by the drafters of the Constitution: a promise to amend the Constitution to include what we now call our Bill of Rights. With this, many of the states ratified the Constitution and allowed its adoption by June 21, 1788. And o, save a handful of amendments to occur later in history, the United States now had a formidable government created by a Constitution actually worthy of the new republic. In it, our forefathers structured a straightforward explanation of the three branches of our government, the powers granted and denied to each department, and the difference in powers granted to the states and the powers reserved to the federal government. The strict structure of the Constitution reveals a second facet of its drafters’ thought process (the first being compromise): the formation of a lasting egime. Compared to the history of some other countries, the U. S. has enjoyed some fair consistency in its government in the aspect that our Constitution withstands without any complete overthrow of the government. This is established in that middle section of the Preamble; six main purposes of the Constitution were clearly stated: â€Å"in order to form a more perfect union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity’. The longevity of the Constitution that had to be part of its drafters’ intent can be easily seen in ways that live past our forefathers. Along with our Declaration of Independence, the Constitution has been a source of inspiration for many events in history – both our history as a nation and events in world history. Countless events in the U. S. have been inspired by the words written in those documents: abolitionist movements and the Civil War; the Declaration of Sentiments and the women’s rights movements; other numerous civil rights movements; court cases such as Marbury v. Madison; controversy over acts of Congress such as the Alien and Sedition Laws. Words quoted from the Declaration of Independence and Constitution have greatly influenced pop culture, especially through music, and the notions of equality, natural rights, and Justified government have inspired events throughout the world, notably the French Revolution and the Spanish American War. The idea of a written constitution, which the U. S. Constitution started, and the ideas of government structure and natural rights have inspired constitutions of other countries. To conclude, the history of the drafting of the Constitution and the history of its impact on the world greatly reflect the thought process that our forefathers utilized in writing it. Two aspects ot the Constitution denne the purpose witn which its drafters based its words upon: the basis of compromise and the structure with which the Constitution would last for the past 226 years. Our forefathers might not have anticipated that the Constitution last for over two centuries, but they most certainly wrote it with the intent of a strong foundation for the nation we are proud to call our home – the United States of America. How to cite The First of Its Kind, Papers