Cathedral by Raymond Carver

Cathedral by Raymond Carver

Abstract

Raymond Carver’s Cathedral is a story that seeks to explore the narrator’s fears and insecurities of what he does not understand, but he gets to understand his fears much later as the story progresses. The story is set in the narrator’s home. This setting has been classified as regionalized because the story evolves from there. The story revolves around the narrator’s wife’s friend from the past who has come to visit. The friend is called Robert, and he is blind. They knew each other ten years ago, and they have kept contact all along. They have been corresponding regularly through tape recordings. The narrator indicates his detest for blindness based on his observations and the movies he has been watching. The fact that his wife befriends a blind person irritates him a lot. The narrator’s mind and constricted perspectives are opened by the transcending climax when Robert, despite his blindness, demonstrates unique cathedral experiences. His experiences are able to transform a non-believer into a completely new person full of optimistic perspectives.

Raymond Carver Biography

Raymond Carver (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American poet and short-story writer. He was born in northwestern Oregon in a small town called Clatskanie. His family would later move to Yakima in Washington before he started school. He was schooled in Washington for both the elementary and high school levels. His favorite leisure activities were hunting and fishing. His writing career was inspired by the rugged environment in the rural Pacific Northwest region. He also added that his career was largely influenced by the fact that he got married before the age of twenty. However, the family pressures and the responsibilities of parenthood almost killed his dream to become a writer.

Throughout his life, Carver was obsessed with ideas of becoming a writer. As a teenager, he took a correspondence course in writing. His obsession was skewed toward short stories, and he never had an interest in novels. According to him, short stories best suited his life circumstances as they could be finished after a few sittings. In his youth days, he read content from Zane Grey Westerns, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ science fiction works, and men’s magazines such as Argosy, True, Outdoor Life, and Sports Afield. His laconic no-frills writing style is attributed to this masculine content that he read.

In 1958, he relocated with his family to North California, where he enrolled as a student at California State University, Chico (then called Chico State College). He enrolled in John Gardner’s creative writing class, and this played a significant role in shaping his writing career. Carver was greatly inspired by Gardner and started to view writing as a classic and high calling that needed to be taken seriously.

He went down in history as one of America’s greatest writers. He was renowned for being a man of few words in all his stories. The stories he did were characterized by a particular austere economy as he wrote plainly and concisely. He had an inclination toward the working-class America of the 20^th century, and his terse prose was perfectly utilized in this subject. Carver devoted most of his career to writing stories even though he also did poems. He stood out from his contemporary writers and authors because of his audacity and veracity in writing about America’s dark side. He uncovered rage, violence, and miserable loneliness that lurked beneath the surface of people’s day-t-day lives. Like many American writers, Carver’s posthumous reputation continues to grow exponentially.

Literary Criticism

Written in 1983, Cathedral is Carver’s most popular and respected collection of short stories. The Cathedral exhibits inarticulate characters who have been isolated by pessimistic perspectives and the inability to amicably relate to other people. In the Cathedral, Carver takes a characteristic divergence from his minimalist style that is seen in most of his works. Carver wrote the Cathedral from the first-person perspective using a narrative from a husband’s character. Other characters in the story are the wife (unnamed), and the blind man called Robert. In this story, the narrative opens with the narrator’s wife’s blind old friend, who was on his way to visit. This opening statement sets the tone for the rest of the story. The manner in which the narrator starts off the narration is characterizes his contempt and detest for blind people. He narrator confirms this when he says that he was never enthusiastic about Robert’s visit. He claims not to have known him, but he was particularly bothered by his being blind.

The narrator’s obstinate closemindedness is demonstrated by his sense of self-isolation. This is apparent in his preconceptions and feelings about blindness. He identifies the blind as being remote and distinct from other people. With the admittance that his understanding of blindness comes from movies, one is rightly justified to say that the narrator’s ideas are frankly absurd. He may have seen blind people in the movies who do not smoke or wear a beard, but the kind of disdain he has for blind people was never exhibited in any of the movies he watched. Regarding Robert and Beulah’s nuptials, he contemptuously asks whether anybody would really want to attend such a wedding. He demonstrates a rather harshly insensitive attitude towards Beulah. He seems to pity Beulah for her marriage to Robert, and this suggests that Robert’s blindness could not have allowed him to marry.

According to (Insert Citation), the plot of a short story should be characterized by events and actions which are conflict-driven. Carver’s Cathedral is defined by the following two major conflicts. The first one is character versus character conflict. This is seen between the narrator and the blind man Robert. As noted earlier, the narrator detests Robert’s blindness. The narrator becomes even more uncomfortable with the realization of the relation between the man and his wife. The second notable conflict is the conflict between character and self. This is portrayed by the narrator’s insecurities in his family relationship with his wife. When his wife tries to share with him, he becomes unresponsive and uncommunicative. The narrator’s wife makes an attempt to share her recorded conversations with Robert and her poetry, but the narrator becomes indifferent. He only describes preconceived notions he had concerning blind people; walking with canes, wearing dark glasses, and not smoking.

Interestingly, Robert never walked with a cane, and he never wore dark glasses, but he did smoke. The disdains blind people, and he feels there is nothing about them that should never make one afraid. At dusk, several alcoholic drinks are consumed, and the wife falls asleep, leaving the two guys alone to talk. A program about cathedrals is being aired live on a television broadcast. The narrator tries to verbally explain a cathedral to Robert, who then requests for a pen and paper so that he can draw a cathedral. The two men get down to draw a cathedral, and the narrator draws as Robert’s fingers felt the lines and shapes. Robert instructs the narrator to close his eyes in turn as they continue drawing. When the narrator opens his eyes and sees the creation of their labor, he marvels at how he managed to do it with his eyes closed.

The narrator had a unique epiphany in this excerpt. Robert had managed to make him realize something. Robert’s blindness never hindered him from having insight. The narrator drew a blind man, and when he was momentarily sightless, they both managed to see a product they had drawn. The narrator becomes enlightened to the reality that sight does not only entail the ability to see one’s surroundings. A notable irony in the conflict between the narrator and Robert is seen in their respective spousal relationships. Despite Robert’s blindness, he is able to appreciate his wife Beulah more than the narrator does with his complete visual sight. The narrator is dismissive of his wife, and he is more than remote to her.

The overall theme that Carver seeks to address in Cathedral is that people should never make prejudiced and harsh judgments against other people based on their physical disabilities. It is important to take time and know a person’s true character and personality. Physical disabilities such as blindness should not make these people to be seen as though they are ill-equipped for anything. From this development, the story revolves around the narrator’s prejudiced perspectives on his awakening. The irony in this story is that it takes the guidance of a black man for the narrator (with all senses) to open his eyes and finally realize his inadequacies in relating with other people, develop friendships, and maintain a sustainable relationship with his wife. This is the central irony in Cathedral as the narrator ignorantly detests blindness, but he is not able to realize limitations in his sight. This aspect is also about transcendence in the sense that Robert is able to live beyond physical ability limitations. Robert is able to appreciate the wonder of things in a manner that the narrator cannot. Robert sees the potential for tenderness and greatness in humanity, but the narrator is too blind to appreciate this.

Carver’s Cathedral portrays alcohol as a constructive force rather than a destructive one. Alcohol is used to build emotional ties and connections between two strangers (the narrator and Robert). It creates mental liberation and consciousness for the narrator. It functions to release tension and liberate the narrator thereby allowing him to change his pessimistic perspectives about blindness and blind people. When Cathedral opens, tension is at its peak with a narrator who is close-minded and very jealous. This tension is because a male friend to his wife is coming to visit. The narrator is bothered by Robert’s blindness, and the tension exacerbated with the realization that the two have close ties. He gets jealous of the fact his wife had become friends with the blind man. Tension is spiked further with his wife’s dismissal of his unwarranted jealousy. Carver’s terse prose is mirrored by the superficiality of the narrator’s vision in his lengthy description of the physical appearance of Robert.

In Cathedral, smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol plays a crucial role in easing and releasing tension. It facilitates bonding between the narrator and Robert, hence expanding and deepening the narrator’s narrow and superficial vision. Alcohol is used as a good pastime event between the narrator and the blind man Robert. Initially, the narrator starts drinking to beat his jealousy due to the prevailing emotional connection between his wife and Robert. However, he ends up intoxicated and socially lubricated as he reaches an epiphany. His wife easily gets overwhelmed by the drugs and alcohol, but nobody bothers to awaken her. With the wife asleep, the tension between the narrator and Robert is relieved, and they start bonding. In the course of this drinking spree, the narrator finally gets to the point of appreciating the blind man’s company. He begins to realize his emotional emptiness in his spousal relationship. He recounts how he never went to bed at the same time as his wife after smoking dope. The moment the narrator spends with the blind man makes him confront his emotional evasions and loneliness. This experience opens up his mind and life to new possibilities and perspectives. The blind man’s expansive vision is able to guide the narrator to start thinking beyond the confines of narrow perspectives and realities. In Cathedral, Carver has managed to artistically portray alcohol as a literary tool with immense paradoxical power.

The narrator uses alcohol to blunt his fears and insecurities. Alcohol helps a lot in loosening the tension between the narrator and Robert. However, the intoxication robs him the coherence he should have had with his wife together with the blind man. Eventually, alcohol works as a crucial lubricant in the socialization between the narrator Robert. It allows them to connect and bond through stories. Therefore, in Cathedral, Carver depicts alcohol and drugs in a manner that they are able to give and take.

The narrator’s change of perspective reaches its climax under the liberating influence of drugs and alcohol. The narrator describes a cathedral to the blind, but he (the narrator) cannot capture the spiritual essence of cathedrals. Somehow, he starts to feel limited despite his healthy vision. He agrees to draw a cathedral with the blind man while under the immense influence of drugs and alcohol. In this state of inebriation, the narrator is made to experience an emotional and physical connection that he would not have appreciated in his sober mind. Interestingly, he recounts how Robert’s fingers guided his hand as they drew with eyes closed. Through this intimate connection of hand touching, the narrator recalls and understands how Robert was able to touch and appreciate his wife (Beulah) despite visual impairment. The narrator is made to face his greatest fear of intimacy as he inhabits and experiences the life of a blind man. He never wanted to open his eyes again because he did not feel like he was inside anything. The fears, the jealousy, and the tension disappear, and he feels liberated. The alcohol and drugs endow the narrator with a liberal vulnerability that he would not have experienced in sobriety. The story symbolically ends in darkness, with the narrator’s eyes closed as though in communion. This would signify the unresolved emotional evasions and tensions and, at the same time, point to connection and revelation. The narrator is finally able to get to a point of profound transformation in terms of vision while under the influence of alcohol.

Ironically, the blind man has been able to teach the narrator how to see and appreciate the wonders of creation. In Cathedral, Carver uses Robert’s blindness to show that the physical limitations of the world do not hinder blind people. The tapes that Robert and the narrator’s wife share imply that Robert is passionate about traveling and establishing strong social ties and relationships with people. He is also determined to share with others, and he never criticizes other people. For example, when they draw a cathedral, he tells the narrator to close his eyes and see if he can draw with eyes closed. Despite his blindness, Robert appreciates reality more than the narrator. Ironically, Robert guides the narrator into enjoying his company with him, and the narrator feels compelled to experience more of Robert’s insight. The narrator even feels like making the blind man visualize how a cathedral looks like.

An interesting twist in this story is the fact that it has religious connotations. The transcendence with which Robert views reality has a strong connection with Christianity. A cathedral is used as a central image in this story, and it points to religious aspects of the story. It emphasizes and stresses the need for people to coexist together as a community. Robert pays little attention to the size of the cathedral, and he visualizes it as place for people to live communally. When the narrator finishes drawing the cathedral, Robert tells him to put some people in it. He demonstrates strong faith in something great, and in the process, he manages to inspire the narrator. When Robert asks the narrator whether or not he is religious, the narrator confesses that he does not believe in anything. This experience comes out vividly as a religious ritual. In their conversation, the narrator fumbles as he explains things while all along Robert listens quietly and encourages him to carry on with the explanation. The gentleness demonstrated by Robert can only be comparable to that of a confessor or a priest in a spiritual moment.

Finally, Cathedral ends with effusive optimism that not only demonstrates the power of transcendence but also brings out Carver’s worldview of beauty and communion. The story emphasizes the need for people to overcome isolation and confront their fears, limits, loneliness, and insecurities. For one to fully understand Carver’s Cathedral, it is essential to understand the first-person voice that is masterfully used in the story. The narration demonstrated in this story one of Carver’s most vivid narrations. The narrator is portrayed as forthcoming based on his personal qualities and his insecurities. Besides being mean and crude, Carver depicts the narrator to be glib. His narration has a characteristic sense of humor that keeps the readers following. Carver designs this story in such a way that the narrator’s primary problem of being detached for life is revealed in the narration.

References