Ray Carver's character Bub, in "Cathedral," seems irritated and sometimes hostile. His lack of self-endurance is portrayed in his initial actions. The vehemence of his prejudice is surprising. His initial anger and anxiety seem way out of proportion to the situation, as if the blind man were threatening to him somehow. Ray Carver shows his negative character in the introduction, and proceeds to change his character in the closing.
In the early part of the story the narrator (which is the main character), is telling his audience the story in which his wife had met this blind man. The character shows how threatened he is by this blind man in the very first paragraph were he says "and his being blind bothers me" (par 1) and "A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to" (par 1). He further demonstrates how threatened he feels while telling the story in which the blind man touched his wife's face and how she had felt so strongly about it that she had written a poem about it. As he continues to tell the story of his wife and the blind man he seems to be getting more and more irritated, as if this blind man was able to communicate with his wife much better than he was. His weaknesses continue to surface throughout t
Thus the narrators' character whose life is just a mere existence becomes enlighten by one of the very things he was threatened by, a blind man. The narrator becomes touched at the end as he experiences something he never thought possible. The narrator leaves us with the feeling that maybe he will be a changed person after this night. Maybe.
It is at that point the story and the narrators' character changes. The blind man asks the narrator to draw a cathedral. With the blind mans hand over the top of the narrators' hand he proceeds to draw a cathedral. As the blind man says, "Terrific. You're doing fine. Never thought anything like this could happen in your lifetime?" The narrator closes his eyes and draws blind, saying, "So we kept on with it. His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing in my life up to now." The ending leaves us pondering about how much more the narrator is learning about him and about human communication than the blind man is learning about cathedrals.
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