“Cathedral” 261With her newfound knowledge, Alice does
figure out how to get into the garden, but it is not
the paradise that it looked like from afar; it is disen-
chanting. Alice’s reaction to the garden proves that
once adolescent experience has altered us, we cannot
return to a purely innocent childhood state. Never-
theless, as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland illustrates,
we may gain something even better in the exchange
that most, if not all, children do not possess: confi-
dence and self-knowledge.
Trudi Van Dyke
CARVER, RAYMOND “Cathedral”
(1981)
First published in 1981 in the Atlantic Monthly,
“Cathedral” became the title story of Raymond
Carver’s sixth collection of short fiction, which was
published in 1983. Although Carver (1938–88), a
prolific writer, had published numerous collections
of fiction and poetry before Cathedral, the short
story and the collection that bears its name signal a
turning point in the author’s career. “Cathedral” was
included in the 1982 volume of The Best American
Short Stories, and the book Cathedral was nominated
for a Pulitzer Prize in 1984. But more important
than the accolades the short story earned was the
new imaginative space it opened up in Carver’s
world of fiction. Carver had already been credited
with recreating and reviving interest in the Ameri-
can short story, but he had also been criticized for
writing minimalist fiction that left its characters just
where they started: inarticulate figures wandering
through a world of dull despair and disillusion. In
“Cathedral,” Carver grants his main character an
epiphany (although one that is perhaps limited and
imperfect) and simultaneously opens up his charac-
ters’ lives and his own writing to the dimensions of
a deeper understanding. Though written in Carv-
er’s spare, unadorned idiom, “Cathedral” eloquently
explores the themes of alienation, community,
and spirituality in the modern world.
The main characters of “Cathedral” are Robert,
the narrator, and the narrator’s wife. Robert, a blind
man who is a longtime friend of the narrator’s wife,
is coming to visit the narrator and his wife after the
death of his own wife, Beulah. The narrator, who
has no interest in meeting Robert, despite Robert’s
important role in his wife’s life, lives in a small, self-
contained world in which he smokes pot, drinks
heavily, watches television, and does precious little
else. Yet by the end of the evening, after the narra-
tor’s wife has fallen asleep, the narrator and Robert
experience a profound moment of connection when,
in a real attempt to communicate with Robert, the
narrator and Robert draw a cathedral together.
Cara McClintock-WalshalienatiOn in “Cathedral”
The story arc of “Cathedral” traces the narrator’s
movement from alienation to intimacy, or from
isolation to a sense of community. The unnamed
first-person narrator opens the story by recount-
ing scenes from his wife’s friendship with Robert, a
blind man who is about to visit them. These scenes,
and Robert’s appearance in the couple’s life, delin-
eate a sharp contrast between his wife’s capacity for
intimate relationships and the narrator’s own arid,
lonely existence. The wife’s relationship with Robert,
initially that of employee and employer, deepens into
a meaningful friendship and culminates in an act of
physical intimacy between the two: “On her last day
in the office, the blind man asked if he could touch
her face. She agreed to this. She told me he touched
his finger to every part of her face, her nose—even
her neck! She never forgot it.” Here Robert physi-
cally touches the contours of the wife’s face; in other
ways, he touches the contours of the wife’s life, and
acts as her trusted and valued confidante. Over the
years, the wife and Robert have been recording and
sending audiotapes to one another that act as revela-
tory personal missives between the two. In the wife’s
life, Robert symbolizes intimacy and emotional
connection. Compare these moments of commu-
nion between Robert and the wife to the narrator’s
inability (and refusal) to relate to or forge a bond
with anyone in his life.
When looking at other people’s meaningful
relationships, the narrator either disparages them
or denies them significance. When telling the story
of his wife’s life, the narrator elides any discussion
of love with a blithe “etc.” Of his wife’s first hus-
band, the narrator says: “But she was in love with
the guy, and he was in love with her, etc.... [A]t