Response Paper on Raymond Carver's "Cathedral"

Here's a link to a pdf of Raymond Carver's "Cathedral."

http://www.giuliotortello.it/ebook/cathedral.pdf

Jealousy and Love

        Jealousy has been always one of the biggest challenges in any relationship for human beings. I see the narrator's marriage is in trouble in the first two thirds of the story. Therefore, the insecure feeling makes the narrator seem more like an unlikeable person than he actually is. He worries about the fact that Robert and his wife will be more than friends after Robert's visit. I disagreed with Rupton's point of view when I read the second paragraph in his response paper, "As he makes jokes about stereotypes, you start to dislike or distrust him," and the remark of the "narrowminded [sic] guy" in the last two paragraph. I was just shocked about the word the narrator used, "Negro." Other than that, I don't feel distrust him, or he is a narrow-minded person. The same, I disagreed with Qualls' thesis statement that the narrator is a person who lacks ability to connect with others. He is a human being. He sees Robert as a threat to his marriage. What positive thinking are we supposed to expect from him?

        For many religious people, cathedral symbolizes the possibility to be close to God, but our narrator doesn't believe in God. I interpret cathedral metaphors as the possibility for the narrator to reach love. Scotch and marijuana play an important role in this story as they allow the narrator to accept Robert's request to draw a cathedral together. Scotch and marijuana imply that we need help in certain circumstances, and it doesn't matter where the help comes from. For most of us, the help might come from a friend, since the narrator has no friends (pars. 10), we pardon him for using the other resources.

        All in all, this is a love story in which the narrator struggles and conquers with jealousy. Hopefully, when the narrator woke up the next morning, he and his wife have a mutual friend, Robert, as Robert has guided the narrator from a sighted man to a man who is able to see the insight of love when he opens his heart to new ways of looking at it