The Effects of Jealousy in Raymond Carver's "Cathedral"

From the beginning of this short story, it is very clear that the main character dislikes his wife's blind friend. However, the reason for this dislike is not so clear, on the surface. The character attributes his dislike of the man to a dislike of the blind: "The blind moved slowly...never laughed...were led by seeing-eye dogs" (1). But these offensive comments are almost comical in their absurdity; after all, whoever heard of being prejudiced against the blind? The comments are so ridiculous that they practically invite the reader to find a deeper, more meaningful explanation for this man's disgust with his wife's blind friend. In reality, the simple answer to all of these repressed feelings of disapproval is nothing more than jealousy.

To begin with, the husband is jealous of his wife's former life - and, especially, her former lover. His quick dismissal of their relationship is evidenced in paragraph two: "She was in love with the guy, and he was in love with her, etc." The et cetera is particularly significant in that it represents the (apparent) disinterest the main character has in his wife's relationship with this "guy." The et cetera appears again in paragraph three: "...married her childhood, etc." From what we can interpret, this man's wife had a fine relationship with "her childhood" - that is until she divorced him, resulting from her loneliness from the life of an officer's wife. And throughout all this, she was maintaining a relationship with the blind man, and in the process, she became much closer to him than she was to anyone in her life.

And so we now come to the true cause of the jealousy: the blind man, the friend who helped the main character's wife through the most difficult period of her life. In this period, she attempted suicide, moved away from her husband, divorced, and then finally met the main character, her future spouse. Yet despite all these traumatic events, in spite of it all, the blind man managed to stand by her in spirit and on tape. It could even be argued that he was the reason she was still alive, since everyone needs some kind of emotional outlet. But the fact remains that the wife's relationship with Robert has proven to be the best relationship in her life. This is best illustrated when Robert visits, because the wife seems rather disappointed she can't be with Robert: "My wife...looked at me...[and] she didn't like what she saw" (30). Furthermore, the wife will not admit to Robert that marrying her husband was a good thing; at least, that's how our main character interprets it (46). Finally, the last indication of an inferior spousal relationship is when the narrator admits that "[his] wife and [he] hardly ever go to sleep at the same time" (85), a good sign of a dysfunctional relationship.

In total, the wife may have spent more time with Robert and the tapes than she has with her current husband - and the husband knows this. He knows that she is disappointed with him, that she has more love for Robert than she has for her own husband, and it is for this reason that the husband hates Robert - at first. He hates him for his emotional relationship with his wife. By the end of the story, however, he has developed a like for Robert, a like that results from personality rather than physicality. The husband is never prejudiced against blind people at all, really; this is why it is so easy for him to become friends with Robert. The narrator does not have a problem with a physical handicap. His problem is one of accepting the lack of emotion between him and his wife, and his other problem is letting go of possibly the worst vice: jealousy. (636)