He has the narrator draw a picture of the cathedral. Robert attempts to open the narrator up to the world a little more after his failed attempt of describing the scene of the cathedral on the television. The narrator unlike his wife lacks understanding. ” This instance is evidence of the narrator’s lack of creative interpretation and his closed mindedness. ” She later shows her poem to the narrator to which he thinks little of it and responds with saying “Maybe I Just don’t understand poetry. She wrote a poem or two every year, usually after something really important had happened to her. She may not have known the meaning or significance of her encounter with Robert, but she was sure to document It In hope of numbering and learning from it. ” Poetry is an outlet of expression, a gateway to Insight, self-discovery, and understanding. This inspired her to write a poem about the experience. ” He may have been blind, but he then knew what she looked like, what she felt like. “On her last day in the office, the blind man asked if he could touch her face. Robert ten years ago, the narrator’s wife experienced one of her most intimate encounters with him. Carver uses art in the form of poetry to represent Insight. Robert exclaims upon their first meeting that “l feel like we’ve already met,” and he had never spoken to him prior to this event. He even knew her husband before he met him in person. Robert knew who she was and just about everything about her without ever seeing her. The tapes were a forum through which they shared their lives with each other. Sure on the surface, the tapes were Just a method for the woman and the blind man to interface, but they meant much more than that. They could have written letters perhaps in Braille In place of the tapes, but that would not have been as Intimate of an Interaction. ” They would communicate by sending recorded conversations on audiotapes to each other, a symbolic expression of their care for each other. But she and the blind man had kept in touch. “She hadn’t seen him since she worked for him one summer in Seattle ten years ago. Their continuous communication Is what built the strong and lasting relationship that the wife and Robert had A relationship stronger than that she had with her husband.

They were a medium through which they could communicate and share their feelings and stones with each other. The tapes sent between the narrators wife and Robert were definitely a form of art.

The narrator is not physically blind, but he is oblivious to the problems he faces. Carver employs the use of symbolism in the form art representing insight to highlight the narrators blindness to his life. Symbolism in “Cathedral” In Raymond Carver’s short story, “Cathedral,” a man has his eyes opened up to the world through the lad of his Wolfe blind friend, Robert.

Cathedral raymond