Reading Notes B, Week 15, Cathedral By Raymond Carver (1981)

This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night.

She hadn’t seen him since she worked for him one summer in Seattle ten years ago.

I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit.

And his being blind bothered me.

My idea of blindness came from the movies.

She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose- even her neck!

“I don’t have blind friends,” I said.

They’d married, lived and worked together, slept together – had sex, sure – and then the blind man had to bury her.

Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one.

I saw my wife laughing as she parked the car. I saw her get of the car and shut the door. She was still wearing a smile. Just amazing.

This blind man was late forties, a heavy-set, balding man with stooped shoulders, as if he carried a great weight there. He wore brown slack, brown shoes, a light brown shirt, a tie, a sports coat. Spiffy. He also had this full beard.

I watched with admiration as he used his knife and fork on the meat. He’d cut two pieces of the meat, fork the meat into his mouth, and then go all out for the scalloped potatoes, the beans next, and then he’d tear off a hunk of butter bread and eat that.

“Close your eyes now,” the blind man said to me.

So we kept on with it. His fingers rose my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now.

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.

Literary devices used

Imagery

Setting

Characterization