Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, developed two types of morals in his work "Self Assertion," master morality and slave morality, in which people are separated and categorized. These morals are different based on certain characteristics and the personalities that the subjects possess. Nietzsche defines master morality as the morality of the strong-willed. The master moralities were mainly for the nobles; those are the ones that are supposed to be strong and powerful. These people may also possess open-mindedness and courage. On the other hand, slave morality does not arise from the strong, it originates in the weak. The moral of slave morality is to not impose the strength and will on others like master morality does, but to unite. In unity, slave moralities find strength. In the short story "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver, the narrator possesses qualities that resemble both moralities but his wife and the blind man resemble those who have slave moralities and are true at heart.
The narrator in this story is a man who is nameless throughout the story, which is immediately a characteristic in which he would be considered to be subjected to slave morality. The ideal of the narrator remaining nameless during the story refers to the idea that slave morality possesses humility. Although this is the opening view about the narrator, he continuously judges the blind man in the story. It is particularly noticeable when the narrator comments on the way the blind man eats. The narrator says that he had, "watched with admiration" the skill that he possessed with his "knife and fork on the meat" as if being blind hindered his ability to eat like a normal human being (Carver, 211). That observation during the story truly illuminates how arrogant he is about blindness. He truly is just astonished with the fact that the blind man is still living and is actually able to live on his own.
