Cathedral

                In Cathedral, by Raymond Carver, the main character showed his jealousy throughout the majority of the story. When the story first begins the narrator, the husband, tells us that his wife’s blind friend is coming to visit. The narrator doesn’t sound pleased that the blind friend is coming to stay because he goes on to describe how his wife is in constant communication with the Robert, the blind man.  The narrator, to me sounds as if he’s very insecure about who he is and where he stands in life. Even after he shows he’s jealous of Richard’s arrival, the narrator talks about his wife’s ex-husband. The ex-husband is an officer and seems to have made himself into something. Though it doesn’t say what the narrator’s job is, it is very evident that the he’s jealous of the ex-husband job as well as the attention that his wife gave to him.  He wants desperately to be to be recognized by his wife and given attention that he hates that he’s not even being mentioned when Richard and his wife are talking after dinner.

                I think that the metaphor with the blind man’s disabilities and the narrator is that Richard tried to educate himself about what was in the world so he could envision it. While the narrator was blind due to not caring about any object.

                Carver’s writing style was hard to read when I first started. After a while it became easy and I could envision the scene taking place. His writing style left room for the imagination to create.  Even though I did come to appreciate Carver’s writing style, I prefer to read a complete sentence any day.