To See isn’t to Belong but to Touch is to Feel Essay Example for Free

To See isn’t to Belong but to Touch is to Feel Essay The Cathedral is a very interesting short story that defines people and places.   Raymond Carver demonstrated how spiritual blindness can make a person loose his sense of place and ultimately barricades a person sense of touch.   There could be places where two or more people live or stay close to one another but are really out of touch because they have set walls in between.   This ignorance has made people unable to see what is beyond in everything with their normal eyesight in which the author of the short story manifested in the beginning. Spiritual blindness leads to lack of communication or understanding.   This is the state of Bub the narrator when he first met Robert who is blind, a long time friend of his wife.   Robert serves as the story keeper of the narrator’s wife whose name was never mentioned but was simply called my wife by Bub and my dear to him. The narrator’s voice was craftily sculptured by the pen of the writer; it described his skepticism towards the blind friend of his wife and his easy going relationship with his wife.   The tone of the story tells about a marriage that is going towards a period of tepidity despite to the woman it is already a marriage of a second chance for happiness.   The tones used by the writer to describe the blind man prefigured a strong man that despite of his handicap, Robert is a man who made his touch more powerful than his eyes. The voices even expressed how fruitless it was to described a thing when the eye that can see can not comprehend what it sees that is when the narrator finally commented â€Å"I’m not doing so good, am I (Carver, 1983)?†Ã‚   But ironically was able to explain how the blind man understood things when he began to asked if the paintings are made of fresco paints and that cathedrals needs hundred of workers who would never lived to see their work completed because it takes a hundred years for it to be built. Robert explained to Bub that a lifetime is not enough to learn everything by saying that â€Å"they’re no different from the rest of us, right (Carver, 1983)?† The story tells about a man who learned to live well without having the gift of sight of which many people are incapable of doing.   Many people today are like Bub who are afraid to live without their necessities in life and are even unhappy in spite of what they have. Bub is a physically complete person, good natured but do not possess a deep character because of his insensitivity towards the needs of others.   Though he possesses his youth and physical attributes he was an incomplete person and that search led him to use cocaine simply because he wanted more but just cannot get or know where to take it in spite of the presence of a wife.   The woman on the other hand is the feminine version of humanity who seeks to be nurtured and loved but still was taken for granted by her husband.   Her longing to belong was the reason she was able to keep that good friendship with Robert which according to his husband was just a form of recreation or diversion or a life that we call simply fleeting away. The climax of the story was when Bub’s hand was touched by Robert while sketching the figures of the cathedral as he sees them on the television screen. Bub’s hand was able to define the lines and the blind man was able to see through those strokes.   However, that exchange of motion taught Bub to see without staring and made him realized his sense of place by simply feeling he was on it as he is being guided by another.   He finally felt that he is with someone and that experience made him see without looking. Finally, Bub learned from Robert how to feel through those same hands that was able to accompany Beulah to her deathbed and touched the face of his wife with an elegant tenderness.   The handicap in Carver’s story was able to prove to the world the importance of touch because the man who feels and knew how to reciprocate that sense makes a person real, strong and lovable.   Craver’s short story shows a man of every man in modern times, unmindful as long as he does his own thing and that solitude separates him from the rest so he see without seeing and that blindness forbade him to touch and feel. By the end of the story the blind man succeeded in guiding Bub to learn about himself and about human communication as Robert reached for his hand so he too can learn how a cathedral really looks (Donley, 1995).   Bub finally realized his sense of place with an eyes closed when he exclaimed at the end that â€Å"It was like nothing in my life up to now (Carver, 1983).†   References Carver, R. (1983). Cathedral [Electronic Version]. Retrieved 19 April 2008, from http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/cinichol/GovSchool/Cathedral2.htm Donley, C. (1995). Carver, Raymond :   Cathedral [Electronic Version]. Retrieved 19 April 2008, from http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=viewannid=744