Virginia Woolf said, “Isn’t it odd how much more one sees in a photograph than in real life?” Indeed, it is surprising how we often see a photograph beyond the actual footage. Short stories, like photographs, are snapshots of human condition and human nature. It is in these snapshots that we are given the rare chance to see more than what real life permits us to see.
At first glance, Cathedral by Raymond Carver looks like a short story with a boring plot. It was full of dialogues of the characters and contains less of dynamics. But as we looked closer and analyze every detail, the story unravels several things that we sometimes overlooked in real life.
As I first read the story, I thought it was about the husband's jealousy to Robert. But after reading it again, I saw something else. It's the husband's prejudice towards blind men. He sees them as someone with a pair of glasses and dogs to guide them. I think when the two men met, the husband was quite surprised to see a not typical blind man. I think he was caught off-handed seeing Robert act like a normal person. It is in this discovery that he acted weird especially having little experience with blind men. The ending part was, I think, the catch of the story. It was in this scene where Robert, the blind man, guided the husband in drawing a cathedral and also where Robert asked if the husband is looking and with eyes closed the husband answered "It’s really something". The scene was very ironic but enough to send the message to the reader. Sometimes in life we should set aside our prejudice to things and discover first information about things before judging them. Also, people who we considered as the most helpless and needy are at times the instruments in order for us to discover what life really is.
The short story Cathedral was like a photograph, much was shown more than what the writer has written. As what William Boyd said, "when they work well, and work on us, we are given the rare chance to see in them more “than in real life". We need to pass through different layers of the story before arriving to what it really means. And if we succeed, we'll see things that back in reality are overlooked but could have made the difference.
At first glance, Cathedral by Raymond Carver looks like a short story with a boring plot. It was full of dialogues of the characters and contains less of dynamics. But as we looked closer and analyze every detail, the story unravels several things that we sometimes overlooked in real life.
As I first read the story, I thought it was about the husband's jealousy to Robert. But after reading it again, I saw something else. It's the husband's prejudice towards blind men. He sees them as someone with a pair of glasses and dogs to guide them. I think when the two men met, the husband was quite surprised to see a not typical blind man. I think he was caught off-handed seeing Robert act like a normal person. It is in this discovery that he acted weird especially having little experience with blind men. The ending part was, I think, the catch of the story. It was in this scene where Robert, the blind man, guided the husband in drawing a cathedral and also where Robert asked if the husband is looking and with eyes closed the husband answered "It’s really something". The scene was very ironic but enough to send the message to the reader. Sometimes in life we should set aside our prejudice to things and discover first information about things before judging them. Also, people who we considered as the most helpless and needy are at times the instruments in order for us to discover what life really is.
The short story Cathedral was like a photograph, much was shown more than what the writer has written. As what William Boyd said, "when they work well, and work on us, we are given the rare chance to see in them more “than in real life". We need to pass through different layers of the story before arriving to what it really means. And if we succeed, we'll see things that back in reality are overlooked but could have made the difference.
