Blindness creates a world of obscurity only to be overcome with guidance from someone willing to become intimate with the Equally true, the perceptions of blindness can only beovercome when the blind allow intimacy with the sighted. RaymondCarver, with his short story Cathedral, illustrates this pointthrough the eyes of a man who will be spending an evening with ablind man, Robert, for the first time. Not only does this man notknow Robert, but his being blind, "bothered" (Carver 98) him.His, "idea of blindness came from the movies", where, "...theblind move slowly and never laughed" (Carver 98). Thesemisconceptions of blindness form barriers between the blind andthe sighted. Carver breaks down these barriers as he brings thevastly different lives of these two men together. Those of us with sight find it difficult to identify withthe blind. This man, like most of us, can only try to imaginewhat life is like for Robert. As a result of his inability torelate with Robert, he thinks his behaviors are odd, and isunable to understand the relationship he has with his wife. Hiswife worked for this blind man many years ago, reading himreports and case studies, and organizing his "...little office"(Carver 98) in the county's social-service department. He remembers a story his wife told about the last day she worked for him.The blind man asked her if he could touch her face, and sheagreed. She told him that Robert had touched every part of herface with his fingers, "...her nose-even her neck!" (Carver 98).His wife wrote poetry whenever something important happened inher life, and she "...tried" (Carver 98) to write a poem aboutthis unforgettable experience. He said he didn't think much ofthe poem, (although he didn't tell her that), reasoning it wasbecause he didn't understand poetry. In reality though, the actof the blind man touching her face is what he didn't understand.To him this seemed a bizarre encounter. Some people, like hiswife and...
