Isolation In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

Cathedral was wrote by and inspired by Raymond Carver's most famous story. It was first published in "The Atlantic Monthly" in 1981. A somewhat revised version is the last story in Carver's 1983 collection of the same name. We are relying on that version for this guide. Carver, often compared to Ernest Hemingway, is known for his bleak and stark portrayals of working-class people trapped in states of isolation. Cathedral features all of the typical characteristics which Carver uses in his writing and personally considered the “Cathedral” one of his favorites. Carver believed that this story, as well as the other stories in his collection, stating that it was more hopeful and more full developed than any of hiss previous work.

Firstly, Carver uses a first-person narrative to tell the story of cathedral this emphasizes the bewildering aspects of the transcendent moment that relates in the story. The narrator isn't particularly a very skilled story teller, he puts his narrative

He does this through leaving the narrator with his eyes closed, and his imagining the cathedral that he has just drawn with Robert. The abrupt ending to the story leaves many questions unanswered, for example, how the narrator has changed. The answers to the questions aren't the reason for the story. The purpose of the story is to concerned with the change in one mans understanding of himself, his life and the world in which he lives in. Carver ends the story just at the moment when the narrator is a change his whole view on the world. This is highlighted through the final words of the narrators “It’s really something”, this is him realizing that he is an inarticulate man and has always been this way. The use of zero-ending the story is very clever from Carver as he leaves the reader with their breathe held as the narrator sees a new world start to appear through his