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Post by billfeng on Sept 16, 2013 1:12:01 GMT
May I have this flamenco with you two, amychen and hannahlewman? The central conflict revolves around ritual. I interpret the story as a clash between a man who holds onto rituals and a man who does not. The narrator’s bigotry toward Robert is mainly supported by the breaking of a ritual. When the narrator introduces Robert, he states, “He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. … A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (Carver 99). The narrator feels distressed and discomforted that he would have to allow an archetypally blind man into his house. Furthermore, the narrator displays his soreness by telling his wife, “ I don’t have any blind friends” (Carver 101). The narrator feels that his status quo, or ritual, of human normality is being assaulted upon by the presence of the blind man. As a result, the narrator comes off as shallow and indignant of Robert. I agree with Hannah’s point that rituals can make a perfectly functional man blind. Often in both history and literature, a mainstream faction is pitted against an iconoclast who breaks social norms. In the case of “Cathedral”, Robert is an outlier who is getting a heck-lot of unfair treatment by the narrator. The husband’s narrow mindedness gradually crumbles as Robert successfully breaks through the ritual. The narrator notes, “Every night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep. My wife and I hardly ever went to bed at the same time” (Carver 105). Carver suggests that the narrator has a well-established ritual of smoking weed alone at night. Robert throws himself into the ritual by accepting an offer to huff some marijuana. When the narrator’s wife reacts shocked to Robert’s weed smoking, the blind man explains, “There’s a first time for everything” (Carver 104). Roberts openness with introducing himself to something new slowly starts to make the narrator accept him. Robert hammers the final nail on the coffin when he the narrator to draw a cathedral with him. As they draw the cathedral, the narrator notes, “First I drew a box that looked like a house. It could have been the house I lived in. Then I put a roof on it. At either end of the roof, I drew spires. Crazy” (Carver 108). The narrator’s initial shock at something he perceives to be so outlandish and offbeat, the co-operative hand-drawing, soon dwindles after Robert tells him to close his eyes. When he states, “It’s really something” (Carver 108), the narrator’s prejudices toward Robert finally subside. In the end, Robert, who embodies a lack of ritual, comes out as the victor of the story. As Amy said, the story arc of “Cathedral” itself is a ritual. The narrator holds onto the classic fallacy of “I’m only intolerant because I’m not one, myself” until it is broken by the man he is miffed by. Though the story is borderline cliche to me, Raymond Carver is able to successfully make “Cathedral” stand out on a theme that is constantly reverberated in literature. |
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Post by clairem on Sept 16, 2013 1:41:09 GMT
-> Throughout Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" I found that he often related the concept of ritual with the concept of habit. The reason I believe he places so much emphasis on these habits is to allow the reader a simple way to 'track' the narrator's internal shift in perspective. Many of the habits that the narrator has like nodding in response to yes or no questions and knowing what food is where on his plate are second nature to Carver's seeing narrator. Thus, when Carver begins to spend more time with the blind man he realizes how much he takes for granted the simple habits he has formed. The blind man has developed unique habits for his unique situation that greatly differ from those of the narrator. The constant reminder of the idea of habits allow the reader to mark progress in the narrator's mindset.
-> At the beginning of the story the narrator passively experiences habits, the intricacy of putting in the tapes that his wife and the blind man exchanged being a specific example. He never stopped to wonder how the blind man managed to go through the intricate process it took to watch the tapes, "first she inserted the tape into the player and adjusted a couple of dials. Then she pushed a lever..." (Carver 100). when the narrator first meets the blind man he asks which side of the train he rode on in order hear about the view, later he realizes that for a blind person the side of the train is irrelevant. Later at dinner the narrator is in awe of how the man is able to know where his food is on his plate. The narrator shifts from being ignorant to the blind man's situation, to being in awe, to finally comprehending it in the end when he sees through the eyes of the blind man. Carver consistently noted routine, habit, to show the discrepancy that existed between a blind man's habits and those of a seeing man as well as being a subtle way of noting the narrator's shift in perspective and understanding.
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Post by jennyxu on Sept 16, 2013 3:46:32 GMT
Ritual, much like the word cathedral, is often associated with religion. But the story devotes only a couple lines to the narrator's religious views. He tells Robert, "The truth is, cathedrals don't mean anything special to me". Cathedrals, in connection to religion, are not important. Rather, the act of the narrator describing a cathedral to a blind person, drawing it without the sense of sight to truly understand the feel of a cathedral, is the heart of the story. When he says, "It's really something" at the end, the author purposefully makes the meaning of the line ambiguous. The narrator is not necessarily talking about cathedrals; he could be referring to his new view of life without sight. The same applies to rituals in the story. Rituals, defined as patterns of behavior, could simply be the narrator and his wife's mundane nightly routines in front of the television. Throughout most of the story, the narrator resists change, shown in his reluctance to host the blind man in his home. He leans toward the monotony of his everyday rituals. By the end, he breaks his "rituals" when he opens his mind to new ideas regarding a world without sight and connects with Robert in a new way.
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Post by fionabyrne on Sept 16, 2013 4:10:33 GMT
I see rituals as constants. They are solid habits or patterns on which a person can depend. Ritual, however, has neither a positive nor negative connotation in my mind because it can be a ritual to fight with your wife every night or feel alone every Christmas. Good or bad, rituals are natural for humans who are creatures of habit. When a ritual is broken, things change and the pattern is broken which can be an undesired shaking of the frame. In "Cathedral", the author uses rituals and patterns as comfortable constants. The ritual of sending tapes between Robert and the narrator's wife was one that helped both of them to feel less alone. The author also makes it clear that a break of routine, however undesired and uncomfortable at first, can be an incredible thing. The narrator resented Robert's visit at first, begrudging the man and even his disability. By the end, the begrudging and the begrudged became one through mutual empathy which came only by the shaking of a frame.
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Post by naomiporter on Sept 16, 2013 4:54:53 GMT
I agree with most of what has been said so far, but I would like to talk about what happened to the rituals. It is true that some are positive (eg exchanging tapes) and some negative (eg staying up late smoking), and I'm sure there are many other ways to categorize as well. It is interesting, however, to see what happens to the rituals when the blind man comes to visit. It seems that most or all of these rituals change or disappear with the presence of the Robert. The tapes are no longer necessary as the wife and the Robert can now talk in person. The wife no longer goes up to bed while her husband stays up late smoking alone, but instead she stays with them and falls asleep downstairs while her husband smokes with the Robert. Robert's ritual of sitting on a certain side of the train does not apply to Robert because it would not matter since he cannot see the view. Even in the backstory, when the wife tried to write a poem about the experience of having Robert touch her face, the narrator implies that it did not meet the usual standards of her poems, saying "She even tried to write a poem about it... She wrote a poem ever year, usually after something really important had happened to her... I can remember I didn't think much of the poem" (99, 100). The way he uses the word "tried" when describing her writing the poem about Robert, but not for the other poems, and states his low opinion of it makes me think that this poem was different from her other ritual poems. Maybe this is assuming too much, but it seems to me that even then, Robert disturbed her ritual of writing poems about important events. I hesitate to use the word "disturb" because of the negative connotations, but I think it accurately describes the affect Robert has on their lives.
This disturbance of rituals has a very strong affect on the narrator. In more ways than one, Robert's disturbing of rituals seems to have a positive influence on the lives of the narrator and his wife. At first the change is simply things like the lack of need for tapes, but the influence also seems to break down walls between people. It is Robert's "disturbing" the rituals of the couple's life that results in the amazing experience of the narrator and the blind man drawing the cathedral and finally connecting with each other.
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Post by avinash on Sept 16, 2013 5:13:57 GMT
Rituals hold Carver's story together and give it order. For example, the narrator's wife's ritual of sending tapes to the blind man keeps a healthy distance between the narrator and the blind man. Because of this, the narrator never has to face the fact that he is "bothered" (99) by blind people. Of course, the breaking of this ritual is what makes the story interesting.
“But I can’t tell you what a cathedral looks like. It just isn’t in me to do it. I can’t do any more than I’ve done.” (107). The narrator negatively perceives his description of a cathedral from the when the very beginning. He justifies this by describing Robert's reaction and body language. “I wasn’t getting through to him, I could see that. (107)” . In this case the narrator could very well be biased; I don’t think his description is necessarily true. Maybe the narrator wants to believe that he is unable to step outside his comfort zone leading him to undermine his abilities. He has a complex in which he is too timid to break his rituals. A message I take away from all of this is that one has to part with rituals to reach a revelation. The narrator loses his fear and allows the blind man to hold his hand while he draws a cathedral. The narrator never takes a look at the finished product. Instead, he describes a foreign sensation, " My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything" (108). This feeling serves as a moment of discovery. The narrator has never experienced such a sensation.
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Post by emwolfram on Sept 16, 2013 5:31:01 GMT
“Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?” Thank you Amy Chen I really enjoy this quote.
Coming a little late to the party it seems like rituals have been called good, bad, good/bad, bad/good, starting good but becoming bad and yadda yadda yadda. Although I believe arguments for each of those could be made depending on the circumstance, in the story I think rituals are shown to be negative. We get used to our rituals and it makes us stop thinking. The narrator goes about his life taking his abilities for granted (as do most of us). His ability to see is just a fact of life. His life appears to be just passage of time. To him a Cathedral is just another image flashing before him on the late night TV. It will only be on the screen for a while and then it will disappear and he will keep on watching but never truly see. Stuck in a ritual like this a man could go forever watching but never seeing. It is not until the blind makes the narrator see that the ritual was broken. The narrator was forced to really think about the things around him. He could no longer just look but he had to understand. The only way for him to explain what was in front of him to the blind man was to first really see it himself. The narrator's rituals had made all things meaningless and temporary but in breaking the monotmey the narrator truly saw for the first time and then created with his own hands. he was no longer a passive observer of the world and to him it was "really something." (108). Even with his eye still shut the narrator was seeing more clearly than he ever had before.
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Post by madisonarmst on Sept 16, 2013 6:32:30 GMT
I would like to disagree with PJ; I do not think that Cathedrals represent ritual. Rather, I think that drawing the Cathedral and explaining its beauty to Robert is what finally breaks the narrator out of his rut. Before meeting Robert, the narrator is stuck in a routine of working a menial day job and smoking pot at night until he falls asleep. Through out this sad routine, he completely misses the beauty in the world. It is only when he meets Robert that he finally realizes how fortunate he is to be able to see this beauty. His most powerful realization of this comes when he is sharing the beauty of the cathedral with Robert by drawing it for him.
I also disagree with the idea that all cathedrals are built in a similar fashion, with similar mathematical formulas. Cathedrals take hundreds of years to complete and require a special attention to detail. There is no simple "formula" for building a cathedral, it is an incredible piece of art that takes unbelievable dedication and attention to complete. When the narrator was drawing his own cathedral, he started out by drawing arched windows, walls, flying butresses, grand doors and a roof, which are all standard features of a cathedral. The real transformation, however, came after the narrator finished drawing these classic features, and closed his eyes and continued to draw. It is only after drawing what he perceives to be a cathedral--without all the stereotypical features of a cathedral--that he begins to feel free. He says, "I was inside my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything" (Carver 108). After breaking the supposed "formula" for drawing a cathedral and exploring his own artistic ideas, the narrator truly feels free from the routine that had confined him for so long. Finally, because drawing the cathedral is what inspired the narrator to break from his routine, I do not agree that cathedrals represent routines and conformity.
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Post by Marshall on Sept 16, 2013 6:49:35 GMT
For those who occupy a more mundane existence(what's that like?), I imagine it provides an adequate amount of comfort. Ritual and structure create predictable, knowable results. Which ultimately makes life more tolerable for some. For the narrator, this is what ritual does. Interestingly, his rituals get thrown off by the appearance Robert. The knowable may provide stability, but it's also boring. It seems that Robert was exactly what our narrator needed. By sitting with and drawing for a blind man, it causes the narrator to reevaluate his life, if only a little. But that was enough. The one night that they shared freed him from his own monotony.
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Post by shannonfender on Sept 16, 2013 8:17:37 GMT
I definitely agree with Jamie, and I want to expand on this idea that ritual is synonymous to comfort.
Humans have five discernible senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Whatever sensory stimulation we receive from our environment synapse to the brain, where the information is analyzed and established as fact. I, for example, can see and feel the computer in front of me, so it is therefore undeniably real to me. The existence of this computer is perceived as truth, not as speculation. This is our “comfort zone”. We see/hear/feel/smell/taste things, so we know it must be so. But when one of these senses is taken away, the only information we have to process is second-hand, and the person is left to speculate. Bringing back this awful computer analogy, how would you describe the white light emitting from your computer screen to a blind person? You and I know very well what it looks like, but for a person who has seen nothing but blackness for their entire life, what does he or she even begin to imagine?
Thus, blindness is generally viewed as a handicap. The inability to see is not only a physical limitation to one’s way of life, but leaves a person blind to a world of sights that can only be imagined. Initially this seems very sad, but in “Cathedral”, Robert has not let his blindness inhibit his life. He unconditionally loves his wife, he is content with his work, and he has traveled the world.
So what does this have to do with ritual and comfort? I think this concept is best exemplified in the ending. When the narrator first tries to describe a cathedral to Robert, his descriptions were accurate, but dull. The narrator even admits that the cathedrals are “nothing special” to him. However, after drawing the cathedral with his eyes closed, the narrator describes, “My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything… ‘It's really something,’ I said” (Carver 108). In this moment, the narrator is taken out of his comfort zone and must put together the image of a cathedral by his own device. In doing so, it seems that he has found a new appreciation for what he initially believes is less than wonderful.
For those who can see, our scope of the world is limited by the facts and images we perceive to be true. Our perception is therefore stunted, because we only have access to what is comprehensibly possible. Contrarily, Robert’s mind is expansive and limitless. The narrator experiences this freedom of thought when he draws with his eyes closed. With the absence of sight, Robert must piece together the world around him, and this has allowed him to create the world in his own image, rather than live by what the rest of society has adopted as ritual.
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Post by chrisb on Sept 16, 2013 8:26:31 GMT
I’ll begin by echoing what has been written in many previous posts: Robert and the narrator have very different perspectives on rituals. I will, however, provide an excerpt from the story that sheds new light on the discussion.
Robert takes note of his own habit and points out just how “funny” it is. Through Robert, Carver has posed an important question for the reader. He is asking us consider our own habits and whether they hold any real value. The narrator’s response is just as revealing:
The narrator is entirely incapable formulating any opinion regarding Robert’s habit, and more importantly, regarding his own habits. This exchange defines the difference between Robert and the narrator relative to rituals. I do not believe, contrary to what many have said, that Robert is free of rituals and the narrator is trapped by them. Rather, Robert is more cognizant of his habits, and is therefore capable of determining why they exist and how they affect him. In emphasizing this distinction, Carver encourages honest thought and introspection as a means of self-improvement. This is the underlying value of the appearance rituals in “Cathedral.”
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Post by robertxu on Sept 16, 2013 9:02:06 GMT
I would have to agree with Bill and everyone else that is making the argument that the central theme in "Cathedral" revolves around rituals. I find it ironic that Robert is more adventurous than the narrator. At the same time, it's possible that Robert's disability was what forced him to adopt a more open-minded outlook on life. Robert casually mentions that he hasn't "been on a train in nearly forty years" (Carver 4), while the narrator is becoming sentimental over an old sofa that was replaced two weeks ago, he says, " I started to say something about the old sofa. I'd liked that old sofa" (Carver 3). The narrator is even initially visibly discontent with Robert's visit-- not because he is prejudiced, but because he represents a change from his monotonous every-day rituals. The narrator confesses, "I wasn't enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew" (Carver 1). The narrator's banal every-day rituals have clearly made him into an incredibly uninteresting person. He is resistant of change and generally carries a stoic demeanor. Robert opens the narrator's eyes to a new world outside of the comfort of every-day rituals, even by simply smoking dope with him. The narrator describes his routine every night as "Every night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could..."(Carver 7). Simply having someone to smoke dope with brings joy to the narrator's life through its break from monotony. Robert's Patrick Swayze themed ghost pottery scene with the narrator, where they draw together is what seals the deal. After the incident the narrator's thoughts are, "I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything" (Carver 11). Robert's meeting with the narrator serves to represent the ultimate exposure to the real world. The narrator is forced to even for a small while become an integral part of Robert's life, which teaches him lessons not only about tolerance but being spontaneous.
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Post by travistoal on Sept 16, 2013 10:13:50 GMT
Rituals are an important way for one to maintain their personas; be it smoker or writer, everybody has a niche that defines them. These rituals, as literally every single person has said, help keep people balanced. It is important to note that these rituals are a projection of the person partaking in them, from the wife's failed poems -- showing her desire for true emotion and relationships, but inability to follow through -- to the jokester narrator, who smokes every night to chill out, because his inability to feel content and relaxed leads to the need to crack borderline offensive jokes at the dinner table. However, just like in the rainforest, these niches are specific to the characters. When the narrator hears the wife's tapes, he feels uncomfortable at the open honesty, and would rather not know the secrets. Likewise, the narrator's wife tries smoking and staying up late, only to pass out hard. He doesn't feel the need to share emotions, and she doesn't need to smoke to be normal and relaxed. The moral of the story is, the jungle is a very orderly place -- giraffes are not decomposers.
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Post by patricktbutenhoff on Sept 16, 2013 13:10:41 GMT
A few notes regarding the more literal role of rituals in the story, since I still haven't decided on my actual opinion yet.
It seems that everyone in the story has a characteristic ritual. In addition, none of the rituals are understood by any outside characters. Take the wife, for example. She's into writing poems and sending tapes to Robert, both of which the narrator avoids, claiming that poetry really isn't his thing. The narrator always smokes pot and stays up late at night, a habit which disgusts his wife. (We are what we repeatedly do. It's not a coincidence that the husband and wife's main hobbies involve being as far away from each other as possible. That marriage is on the rocks at best.) Robert loves watching color TV, which confuses even himself, and the Spanish ritual on the television takes place every year, even though it seems to serve no actual purpose.
I guess rituals are something we just fall into over time. The blind man and the Spanish Christians just engage in their habits because of tradition. It's neither bad nor good in this case, and the actions don't seem to have any special importance, but it does show the human tendency toward inertia, which the blind man does remark upon in his comment on the television. The narrator is possibly more dictated by tradition than any of the other characters are. He allows his prejudices to control his opinion of Robert and his family, both in his immediate question about Beulah's race and in the quote: "My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed." After never meeting Robert and hearing only positive things about him, the narrator still hates him because of this disability. This, naturally, impedes his future relationship with the blind man, and as the narrator later admits, "I've never met, or personally known, anyone who was blind." After keeping the blind man in his house for the night, the narrator still doesn't know him, not really. He hasn't even made Robert feel welcome. The narrator learns so little about Robert that he can truthfully say he still hasn't actually met him. Instead of keeping his mind open and trying new things, the narrator refuses to come out of the shell of his unhappy marriage. Even staying in this marriage is a habit in itself. There is little love between the narrator and his wife, and they have little reason to remain married, yet they persevere on, living simultaneously together and apart.
With regard to ritual, Carver seems to be saying two things: one, that inertia is a powerful part of human nature, and two, that rituals and habits can prevent one from making positive changes. The narrator is held back by refusing to budge from his past prejudices, and he becomes a worse person as a result.
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Post by Anna M. on Sept 16, 2013 15:33:01 GMT
I agree with Corey. I don't think Carver wanted to depict rituals as a negative because, after all, I'm pretty sure that there isn't a single one of us who can claim that we partake in no rituals. Carver is not putting down the ritual but the way that people, like the narrator, uses rituals in order to stay comfortabe. Even the Narrator's wife use of ritual can go both ways. On one hand, she has stayed connected to a close friend due to the ritual of the tape exchanging. On the other hand, her frequent tape exchange could be a sympton of her need to feel comfort by holding on to the past,and this could negatively affect her present life with her husband.
I think it is ironic that despite the narrators best efforts to avoid making any connection with Robert, the very rituals that help him to avoid any real "bonding" moments with Robert lead to the biggest step that the narrator has taken in (probably) a long time. Watching TV in order to make the situation more confortable for himelf eventually turns on the Narrator. The comfort ends when he realizes that the blind-man can't see anything on the screen and when the television narrator stops explaining Cathedrals. He feels discomforted by this and so he goes even further out of his comfort-zone to tell Robert what is happening. Eventually ths leads to them drawing the cathedral together and to the Narrator trying to see from the blind-man's perspective. Yes, the Narrator avoided discomfort and gaurded himself from new things with rituals, but from this story and from our own lives I think it is safe to say that rituals can also bring us closer together. I feel closer to my family on holidays like Thanksgiving. I feel closer to friends and strangers when we follow the tradition of saying "Happy Birthday" to eachother on their birthday.
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