An Analysis Of Raymond Carver's Cathedral

Raymond Carver Jr. wrote short stories in settings that many would consider ordinary. His stories could often be described as drab, and many of them were characterized by a “zero-ending” or a cliffhanger. His stories often ended abruptly, leaving the reader with a number of unanswered questions. In his story Cathedral, the story appears to close with a “zero-ending.” However, there are many observations and inferences that can be made at the end of Cathedral that make it anything but a “zero-ending.”
Carver was born in Oregon in 1938. He was born into a household that perfectly represented America’s working class. His father worked in a sawmill, while his mother was a waitress. His father was an alcoholic, and Carver would eventually go on

Many of Carver’s stories related directly to his own life. He wrote about working class people that were much like himself. His writing style was a sort of realism that many people might find boring. He also was known for writing stories that ended in a “zero ending,” or had no clean ending at all. He wrote Cathedral after he had recovered from his alcoholism, and the story has a brighter ending than most of his other works. Cathedral is narrated in first person by an unnamed man. The only two other characters in the story are the narrator’s wife, and a blind man named Robert. The story begins with the narrator explaining the current situation. A blind man is coming to stay the night at their house. The narrator’s wife has a unique past with the blind man. The wife used to work for Robert years ago, but has stayed in touch with him ever since. From the details of the story it’s clear that the narrator is uncomfortable with a lot of things about the situation. His discomfort could be stemming from a number of things. First off, this man is a stranger. The narrator and his wife seem to live a quiet and lonely life. It does not seem like they go

Eventually, the wife falls asleep and the narrator and Robert are left alone watching television. The program that’s on shows a number of cathedrals on the screen. It comes up that the blind man doesn’t know much about cathedrals, as he’s never seen one. He asks the narrator to describe one for him. The narrator tries to describe it to Robert, but he has difficulty doing it, and he feels like he’s doing a bad job. Eventually the narrator says, “The truth is, cathedrals don’t mean anything to me. Nothing. Cathedrals. They’re something to look at on late-night TV. That’s all they are.” The real truth is that this holds true for the narrator about a lot of things in life. He doesn’t think about things too much; they’re just things. He doesn’t experience things in life to their fullest potential. He only takes things at their face value and goes through the motions the same way every