John Stuart Mill once wrote “The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” Truer words have never been spoken and lead me into the heart of this essay? What is conflict? Within a story structure, it is what moves the characters along and generally provides the meaning for telling the story at all. If one were to tell a story where no conflict was involved, it wouldn't be very interesting story for the reader. For all the negative connotations associated with it, it is conflict that shapes the world and, frankly, gives us something to talk about.
In the story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, we're presented with a man who represents stereotypical suburban America as our narrator. He is our everyman. His politics and socioeconomic status are unknown. He could be anything from working class to wealthy. We don't know, and it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that his lifestyle is one that we can all relate to. He is your typical closed minded conservative (not in a political sense) archetype who fears the unknown and has built up walls to protect himself from any new experiences or emotions. He is what many men strive to be: macho, arrogant, and emotionally unavailable.
Throughout the story he makes comments that explain to the reader that he dislikes change tremendously “I started to say something about the sofa. I'd liked that old sofa. But I didn't say anything.”. Change scares him, as it does most people. I think we all get locked into our daily routines and become confused, annoyed, or even angry, when anything comes along to break it up. Even asking Robert which side of the train he rode on while explaining to the reader “going to New York you should sit on the right-hand side of the train, and coming from New York, the left hand side.” Any deviation from this pattern is remarkable to the narrator.
Along with his dislike for anything outside of his patterned life, we're presented with instance after instance of the narrator putting down, and distancing himself from everything around him. When he mentions his wife's past, he blows it off by leaving the ex-husband nameless and only referring to him in tones that suggest that it isn't important and should be glossed over. When he mentions the blind man that she worked for, he focuses on the time before she stopped working for him when he asked to touch her face. And when he mentions that his wife sets what she feels are important moments in her life into poem form, “She even tried to write a poem about it. She was always trying to write a poem.” Trivial. Insignificant. He doesn't understand it, so it is unimportant. The overriding theme which describes the narrator is someone who is emotionally and intellectually walled off, and is resistant to experience anything new. The idea that his wife has invited a blind man over for dinner is a completely alien concept to him. Why would anyone be friends with a blind person? They're weird. What could they possibly have in common to talk about?
The narrator is presented with a situation he can't escape from. His wife has invited the blind man, Robert, over for dinner and has threatened the narrator with “If you love me you can do this for me. If you don't love me, okay.” As any man knows, that is an ultimatum that has no escape clause. He's trapped, and he's being forced to confront something that he doesn't have any experience with: blindness, and through the blind man, his own insecurity and emptiness. This is represented in the comment that he makes upon Roberts entrance into his home “I'd always though dark glasses were a must for the blind. Fact was, I wished he had a pair. At first glance, his eyes looked like anyone else's eyes. But if you looked close, there was something different about them. Too much white in the iris, for one thing, and the pupils seemed to move around in the sockets without knowing it or being able to stop it. Creepy.”
Throughout the evening, the narrator seems to become more comfortable with having Robert in his home. He's still standoffish and would more than likely find a distant room to hide in if given the opportunity, but he's gone from agitated at the thought of his house guest, to accepting it. Even at dinner, when the blind man seems to use his fingers to eat as much as he does his fork, it escapes the biting commentary that would've accompanied it earlier in the story. Several drinks and two joints in, the two of them end up sitting on the couch having the first normal conversation contained in the story. The narrator has finally opened up some and begun to treat his house guest as a human being instead of an oddity. The narrator is asked to describe the cathedrals that are being shown on a television program. He stutters and stammers his way through the description, it's obviously something he's never been asked to do before, or even thought of. He has the ability to see and takes it for granted that others possess the same ability.
The tipping point finally comes when Robert asks the narrator to draw him a picture of a cathedral since the narrators verbal description has obviously left him frustrated and feeling helpless Robert asks him to instead draw him a picture of a cathedral. He places his hand on the narrators hand and follows along as he draws the picture. The narrator is soon drawing spires and flying buttresses and everything else that goes into a cathedral. Through Robert, he is finally opening himself up and allowing a new experience to enter into his world. He closes his eyes, he draws, and he simply lets go of his inhibitions. “My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything”. The blind leading the blind along an unknown path and providing enlightenment.
In conclusion, the primary focus of the author, whether directly or indirectly, was to point out the lack of tact, the lack of emotion, and the lack of understanding displayed by the narrator in an effort to paint a portrait of the wall he had built up around himself. The wall is his protection, and he uses it to shield himself from anything outside of the realm of his own normal. His confrontation is not with Robert, but with what Robert represents: a new way of looking at life not bound by the same restrictions with which the narrator has bound his own life. He has allowed his walls to tumble for at least one night and has allowed himself to be vulnerable and open. Whether the change is large or small, the narrator has experienced it on this evening and his life's path has been altered forever.
