Sight of the World

Sight of the World

Being able to see the world is a gift. Sight is used as one of our five senses to enjoy everything in our life. Unfortunately some of us take our senses for granted because not everyone in the world is able to enjoy it the way everyone else can. We get to see trees blow in the wind, people we love, and enjoy beautiful structures that are built. However, there are some people in this world who are not given the gift of sight. Helen Keller, the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree, once said, “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.” Just because we have sight, it doesn’t mean we see everything. People that are blind can experience everything we can experience, just not with their eyes. Unfortunately, some individuals find the blind as strange and unusual people. Others judge them on what they cannot do because they can’t see, rather than what they can do without their sight. In the story “Cathedral,” written by Raymond Carver, the narrator is telling the reader in a casual tone that a blind friend of his wife’s is coming to visit them. The narrator is clearly unhappy about the blind man’s pending presence. The main character in the story “Cathedral” faces an external conflict. He must cope with overcoming fear and prejudice of the blind through personal experience as well as mutual respect.

In “Cathedral” the main character, the protagonist, starts off as a judgmental and prejudice person having his wife’s blind friend, Robert, coming to visit her. He doesn’t enjoy having a blind stranger in his house and having his wife take care of Robert. The main character sees Robert as a person who does nothing because he is blind; he assumes that Robert cannot live a “normal” life. The main character does not understand his wife’s connection to the blind man, “They made tapes and mailed them back and forth, I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit” (305)....