Cathedral

Context
Raymond Carver was born in 1938 in the small town of Clatskanie, Oregon, to an alcoholic
father who worked at a sawmill and a mother who worked as a waitress. He grew up in
Washington state and married Maryann Burke, his high school girlfriend, when he was just
eighteen. He and Maryann had two children by the time Carver was twenty-one. After high
school, Carver and his family moved to California, where he worked a variety of odd jobs. He
didnt resume his schooling until 1958, when he began taking classes at Chico State College.
While there, he took writing classes with the writer John Gardner, who introduced him to the
world of writing.
Carver began writing poetry and short stories while continuing to work odd jobs to support his
family. In 1968 he published his first poetry collection, Near Klamath, followed not long after
b y Winter Insomnia (1970) and several other works in the early 1970s. He began teaching at
various colleges, and in 1976 he published his first short-story collection, Will You Please Be
Quiet, Please?, which has become one of his best-known works.
Although Carver earned critical acclaim for his writing, he simultaneously struggled with
alcoholism. His alcoholism was so severe that he was hospitalized several times. He finally
stopped drinking in 1977, after many failed attempts to quit. After a hiatus from writing, during
which time he focused on staying sober, Carver published several more short-story collections:
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), Cathedral (1983), and Elephant
(published posthumously in 1988). Two compilations of Carvers stories have also been
published: Where Im Calling From (1988) and Short Cuts: Selected Stories (1993). A film
version of Short Cuts, directed by Robert Altman, came out in 1993.
Carver has a distinct writing style, a strong, minimalist approach that critics often compare to
the writing of Ernest Hemingway and Anton Chekhov. Carver liked to focus on down-and-out,
blue-collar, middle-class people facing bleak truths, disappointments, and small revelations in
their ordinary lives, all subject matter that places him firmly in the dirty realism school of
writing. Other dirty realism writers include Bobbie Ann Mason, Ann Beattie, and Richard Ford.
Besides the style and subject matter, Carvers short stories are known for their dialogue, which
mimics realistic speech patterns, and their abrupt endingsalso called zero endingsthat fail
to tie up the story neatly, if at all.
Cathedral features all of the well-known Carver characteristics and is often regarded as his
best short story. Carver himself considered it one of his favorites and recognized it as an
important step forward in his writing. Cathedral ends on a slightly more optimistic note than
many of his earlier stories, and Carver believed that this story, as well as the other stories in the
collection Cathedral, were more hopeful and more fully developed than his previous work.
As Carver wrote his later short-story collections, he divorced his wife, Maryann, and married a
writer named Tess Gallagher. They were married for only a few months before Carver died
from lung cancer in 1988. He was fifty.

The narrator says that his wifes blind friend, whose wife has just died, is going to spend the
night at their house. He says that he isnt happy about this visitor and the mans blindness
unsettles him. He explains that his wife met the blind man ten years ago when she worked for
him as a reader to the blind in Seattle. He says that on the last day of her job there, the blind
man touched her face and she wrote a poem about the experience. The narrator then describes
his wifes past. She married her childhood sweetheart and became an officers wife. Unhappy
with her life, she tried to commit suicide one night by swallowing pills, but she survived. She
and the blind man kept in touch by sending audiotapes back and forth to each other throughout
her marriage, and she told everything to the blind man on tapes.
The narrator says that his wife once asked him to listen to one of the blind mans tapes. They
started to listen but were interrupted before the narrator could hear anything about himself. The
narrator suggests taking the blind man bowling. His wife reminds him that the blind mans
wife, Beulah, just died and says that if he loves her, hell welcome the blind man into their
home. The narrator asks whether Beulah was Negro, and his wife asks him whether hes
drunk. She then tells him more about Beulah. Beulah became the blind mans reader after the
narrators wife stopped working for him, and they eventually got married. After eight years,
however, Beulah died from cancer. The narrator thinks how awful it must have been for Beulah
to know that her husband could never look at her. He speculates that she could have worn
whatever she wanted.
The narrators wife goes to pick up the blind man at the train station as the narrator waits at the
house. When they arrive, he watches his wife laughing and talking with the blind man as she
leads him by the arm to the house. The narrator is shocked to see that the blind man has a full
beard. The wife introduces the narrator to the blind man, whose name is Robert. They all sit in
the living room. The narrator asks what side of the train he sat on, and Robert says he sat on the
right and that he hadnt been on a train for years. The narrator says his wife looks at him but
doesnt seem to like what she sees.
The narrator says hes never known a blind person. He describes what Robert looks like and
what hes wearing. Robert doesnt wear dark glasses, which the narrator finds strange. He
wishes Robert would wear them because his eyes look weird and turn in strange directions. He
pours scotch for all three of them, and they talk about Roberts trip.
Robert smokes several cigarettes. The narrator says he didnt think blind people could smoke.
They sit down for dinner and eat ravenously, not speaking, eating so much that they are dazed.
After dinner, they go back to the living room to drink more. The wife and Robert talk about
things that have happened to them in the past ten years, while the narrator occasionally tries to
join in. He learns that Robert and Beulah had run an Amway distributorship and that Robert is a
ham radio operator. When Robert asks the narrator questions, he makes only short responses.
The narrator then turns on the television, irritating his wife.
The wife goes upstairs to change clothes and is gone a long time. The narrator offers Robert
some pot, and they smoke a joint. The wife joins them when she comes back. She says shes
going to just sit with them on the couch with her eyes closed, but she immediately falls asleep.
The narrator changes the channel and asks Robert if he wants to go to bed. Robert says hell

stay up with the narrator so that they can talk some more. The narrator says he likes the
company and that he and his wife never go to bed at the same time.
There is a program about the Middle Ages on television. Nothing else is on, but Robert says he
likes learning things. When the TV narrator doesnt describe whats happening, the narrator
tries to explain to Robert whats going on. The TV narrator begins talking about cathedrals,
showing different ones in different countries. The narrator asks Robert whether he has any idea
what a cathedral looks like. Robert says he doesnt and asks the narrator to describe one. The
narrator tries, but he knows he doesnt do a very good job. Robert asks him if hes religious,
and the narrator says he doesnt believe in anything. He says he cant describe a cathedral
because cathedrals are meaningless for him.
Robert asks the narrator to find a piece of paper and pen. Then he and the narrator sit around
the coffee table, and Robert tells the narrator to draw a cathedral. He puts his hand over the
narrators hand, following the movement of the pen. The narrator draws and draws, getting
wrapped up in what hes doing. His wife wakes up and asks whats going on, and Robert
answers that theyre drawing a cathedral. The wife doesnt understand.
Robert tells the narrator to close his eyes and keep drawing, and the narrator does so. Soon
Robert tells him to open his eyes and see what hes drawn, but the narrator doesnt open them.
He knows hes in his own home, but he feels like hes nowhere. With his eyes still closed, he
says the drawing is really something.

The Narrator - An unnamed man who describes his experience with Robert. The narrator is
jealous of the men from his wifes past and doesnt want Robert to visit, but he eventually
connects with him when they draw a cathedral together. While his eyes are closed, the narrator
has an epiphany after finishing the drawing in which he feels like he isnt anywhere.
Read an in-depth analysis of The Narrator.
Robert - The blind man. Robert visits the narrator and his wife after his own wife, Beulah,
dies. He is a caring, easygoing man who sets even the narrator at ease. He encourages the
narrator to draw a cathedral when the narrator is unable to describe one in words.
Read an in-depth analysis of Robert.
The Narrators Wife - A nameless woman who invites Robert to their home. The wife has
kept in touch with Robert since they met ten years ago, exchanging audiotapes with him and
telling him everything about her life. Before she married the narrator, shed been married to a
military officer and was so unhappy that she tried to kill herself.

The Narrator
Even though the narrator of Cathedral is not literally blind, he displays a lack of insight and
self-awareness that, in many ways, makes even him blinder than Robert. Unlike Robert, the
narrator can see with his eyes perfectly well, but he has difficulty understanding peoples
thoughts and feelings that lie beneath the surface. He pities the deceased Beulah because Robert
could never look at her and doesnt realize that Robert was able to see Beulah in a nonphysical
waythat is, he could understand her intimately. Consequently, the narrator makes no effort to
really get to know his own wife. Instead of welcoming her old friend to his home, he merely
categorizes Robert as part of his wifes past, which makes him jealous, petty, and bitter. He
doesnt care whether this visit is important to his wife or what role Robert may have played in
helping her through her suicide attempt and divorce. The narrator is jealous of his wifes exhusband but also cockily sure of his revered place in her life, expecting at one point to hear her
tell Robert about her dear husband. However, every comment he makes to his wife as well as
everything he does seems designed to annoy and anger her. Far from being a dear husband,
the narrator is insensitive and arguably has no idea who his wife really is. The fact that he can
recognize her on sight doesnt necessarily mean that he knows her intimately.
When the narrator draws a cathedral with Robert and closes his eyes, he has an epiphany during
which he can see more than he ever could with his eyes open. Although he has been curt with
and dismissive of Robert throughout the evening, he is forced to converse with Robert when his
wife falls asleep. After some initial awkwardness, the narrator eventually taps into a core of
compassion, clumsily describing whats on television. The narrators good intentions are
thwarted when he realizes he is unable to describe a cathedral. Even though he can see the
cathedral, he is unable to describe the cathedral to Robert because he cant see its deeper
significance. The act of drawing a cathedral with Robert with his eyes closed, however, lets the
narrator look inside himself and understand the greater meaning. As a result, his description of
the cathedral takes on a more human element, which liberates the narrator and allows him to
truly see for the first time.
Robert
Robert is an insightful, compassionate man who takes the time to truly listen to others, which
helps him to see them better than he could with his eyes. Robert and the narrators wife have
been listening to each other for the past ten years through the audiotapes they send back and
forth. All the difficult details of the narrators wifes past, including her marriage, suicide
attempt, and divorce, have been recorded and sent to Robert, who has recorded responses in
return. He is the person the narrators wife turned to when she needed to talk. The fact that we
never learn exactly what Robert says on the tapes is significant because it suggests that the
mere act of listening to the tapes was more important than responding tothem.
Roberts wife has recently died, but we learn little about his relationship with her and only
slightly more about Robert himself. Though he is there in person, discussing his travels,
Amway distribution business, and hobbies, he seems disembodied somehow and not really
present. The narrators wife is glad to see him, but since he cannot see her, their interaction is
only slightly different from the back-and-forth conversation theyve been carrying on through

the tapes. Robert becomes wholly real, however, when he invites the narrator to draw a
cathedral. With their hands touching, the two men work together and temporarily inhabit a
space that excludes the narrators wife. Robert is not a magical being in any way, but the effect
this interaction has on the narrator is almost mystical.

Themes
The Difference between Looking and Seeing

In Cathedral, the act of looking is related to physical vision, but the act of seeing requires a
deeper level of engagement. The narrator shows that he is fully capable of looking. He looks at
his house and wife, and he looks at Robert when he arrives. The narrator is not blind and
immediately assumes that hes therefore superior to Robert. Roberts blindness, the narrator
reasons, makes him unable to make a woman happy, let alone have any kind of normal life. The
narrator is certain that the ability to see is everything and puts no effort into seeing anything
beyond the surface, which is undoubtedly why he doesnt really know his wife very well.
Robert, however, has the ability to see on a much deeper level than the narrator. Even though
Robert cant physically see the narrators wife, he understands her more deeply than the
narrator does because he truly listens. The wife obviously has a lot to say and has spent the past
ten years confiding in Robert on the audiotapes she sends him. The only interaction we see
between the narrator and his wife, however, are snippy exchanges in which the narrator does
little more than annoy her. True seeing, as Robert demonstrates, involves a lot more than just
looking.
Art as Insight

The narrator, his wife, and Robert find insight and meaning in their experiences through poetry,
drawing, and storytelling. According to the narrator, his wife writes a couple of poems every
year to mark events that were important in her life, including the time Robert touched her face.
The narrator doesnt like the poems but admits that he might not understand them. The narrator
gains insight into his own life when he draws a picture of a cathedral with Robert, realizing for
the first time that looking inward is a way to gain greater knowledge and a deeper
understanding of himself. Robert, too, gleans insight from the drawing. Although its unlikely
that he was able to visualize what the narrator drew, he shares the experience of the narrators
awakening. The narrators mere act of retelling the story of his epiphany helps him make sense
of his newfound understanding. Even though his narrative is choppy and rough and he
frequently interrupts himself to make a defensive comment or snide remark, he gets the story
out, passing along some of his insight to us. The narrator doesnt fully understand what
happened when he closed his eyes and drew the cathedral, but he knows that it was an important
experience.
Motifs
Drinking

The physical act of preparing and consuming drinks gives the story rhythm and weaves the
narrative together. Before every action in the story, someone prepares a drink or sips from a
drink thats already been made. When the wife tries to kill herself, for example, she drinks a
bottle of gin. Before the narrator begins listening to one of Roberts tapes, he makes drinks.
When his wife tells him about Beulah, he drinks. When he waits for her and Robert to come
home from the train station, he drinks. During the evening, the three of them drink constantly.
Also, as the drinking continues into the night, compounded by cigarettes and marijuana, the

story takes on a dreamy tone, with meaning lurking behind every corner but never quite clearly
in focus.
Symbols
The Cathedral

The cathedral that the narrator draws with Robert represents true sight, the ability to see beyond
the surface to the true meaning that lies within. Before the narrator draws the cathedral, his
world is simple: he can see, and Robert cannot. But when he attempts to describe the cathedral
thats shown on television, he realizes he doesnt have the words to do so. More important, he
decides that the reason he cant find those words is that the cathedral has no meaning for him
and tells Robert that he doesnt believe in anything. However, when he takes the time to draw
the cathedralto really think about it and see it in his minds eyehe finds himself pulled in,
adding details and people to make the picture complete and even drawing some of it with his
eyes closed. When the drawing is finished, the narrator keeps his eyes shut, yet what he sees is
greater than anything hes ever seen with his eyes open. Carver isnt specific about exactly
what the narrator realizes, but the narrator says he didnt feel like he was inside anythinghe
has a weightless, placeless feeling that suggests hes reached an epiphany. Just as a cathedral
offers a place for the religious to worship and find solace, the narrators drawing of a cathedral
has opened a door for him into a deeper place in his own world, where he can see beyond what
is immediately visible.
Audiotapes

The audiotapes that Robert and the narrators wife send back and forth to each other represent
the kind of understanding and empathy that has nothing to do with sight. The narrator believes
that Roberts wife, Beulah, must have suffered because Robert could never see her, but in his
own way, the narrator has never truly seen his own wife. Roberts relationship with the
narrators wife is much deeper than anything the narrator can understand. When he hears a bit
of Roberts tape, he says it sounds only like harmless chitchat, not realizing that this sort of
intimate communication is exactly what his own marriage lacks. Only when the narrator closes
his eyes to finish drawing the cathedral does he approach the level of understanding that his
wife and Robert have achieved through their taped correspondence.

Point of View
Carver uses a first-person narrator to tell the story of Cathedral to emphasize the bewildering
aspects of the transcendent moment that he relates in the story. The unnamed narrator is selfabsorbed, concerned only with how the visit from Robert will affect him and dismissive of
what role Robert may have played in his wifes past. At the same time, the narrator lacks selfawareness. He pities Roberts wife, Beulah, because her husband could never look at her, never
realizing that he doesnt really know his own wife despite the fact that he can see her. The
narrator is not a very skillful storyteller either, putting his narrative together crudely, with
rough transitions and defensive interruptions. For example, when he refers to his wifes
childhood sweetheart, he breaks in, Why should he have a name? He was the childhood
sweetheart, what more does he want? Interruptions such as these reveal the narrators jealous
insecurity and suggest that his relationship with his wife is not as stable as he makes it out to
be.
When Robert arrives, the narrator does his best to make sense of him. He describes Roberts
appearance, including his eyes, and observes Roberts actions with a kind of awe: the way
Robert smokes his cigarettes, the way he cuts his meat during dinner. Carvers use of a firstperson narrator is especially effective in these scenes because it makes Robert seem abnormal,
even alien, because the narrator has no concept of what a blind man can and cannot do.
Likewise, once Robert becomes more human for the narrator, he takes shape for us as well. At
the end of the story, when Robert guides the narrator in drawing the cathedral with his eyes
closed, the narrator revels in the strangeness of the experience, and his bewilderment makes
this transcendent moment more poignant. It is a remarkable moment, but the narrators
unsophisticated description of it makes it a human moment as well.

Optimism and the Zero Ending

Carver finishes Cathedral with a zero ending, leaving the narrator with his eyes closed,
imagining the cathedral he has just drawn with Robert. A zero ending is an ending that doesnt
neatly tie up the strands of a story. It may not even seem like an endingin some cases, the
writer may seem to have left off in the middle of a thought or idea. Instead of tacking on a
florid conclusion that leaves everyone satisfied, Carver often stops his stories abruptly, at the
moment when his characters are faced with a stark realization, glimmer of hope, or wall of
confusion. Ernest Hemingway used the zero ending in many of his short stories as well. Also
like Hemingway, Carver wrote in a sparse, masculine style, and this, along with his favored
method of ending a story, has prompted many readers to compare the two writers.
The abrupt ending to the story leaves many questions unanswered, such as how exactly the
narrator has changed, if his relationship with his wife will change, or how his opinion of Robert
has changed. But the answers to these questions are not the point of the story. Cathedral
concerns the change in one mans understanding of himself and the world, and Carver ends the
story at exactly the moment when this change flickers in the narrators mind. The narrator has
not become a new person or achieved any kind of soul-changing enlightenment. In fact, the
narrators final words, Its really something, reveal him to be the same curt, inarticulate man
hes always been. The zero ending, however, adds an unexpected note of optimism to the story.
Until this moment, the narrator has been mostly bitter and sarcastic, but he has now gained a
deeper understanding of himself and his life. Far from leaving us unsatisfied, Carvers zero
ending leaves us with our breath held as the narrator sees a new world start to crack open.

Dirty Realism
The dirty realism school of writing became popular in the 1980s thanks to a group of writers
who began writing about middle-class characters and the disappointments, heartbreaks, and
harsh realities of their ordinary lives. Granta, a highly regarded literary journal, coined the
label dirty realism in 1983 when it published its eighth issue, which featured writers from this
school. Granta 8, as the issue became known, included stories by Angela Carter, Bobbie Ann
Mason, Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver, and many others. Although each of these
dirty-realism writers has a distinctive style, they are connected by their sparse prose, simple
language, and direct descriptions of ordinary people and events. Much of the fiction published
in the New Yorker , where many of these writers were and are still published, is of the dirtyrealism school, but today the termas well as the practicehas somewhat fallen out of
fashion. Many of Carvers short stories, including Cathedral, are prime examples of the
dirty-realist style.

1. And then I found myself thinking what a pitiful life this woman must have led. Imagine
a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one. A
woman who could go on day after day and never receive the smallest compliment from her
beloved.
This quotation appears near the beginning of the story when the narrator ruminates on what life
must have been like for Roberts wife, Beulah, before she died. This passage reveals the extent
of the narrators self-delusion about what kind of husband he is and what really matters in a
relationship. Though he calls Beulahs life pitiful, everything his wife has told him about
Beulah and Roberts relationship suggests the opposite. They were devoted to each other
inseparable, the wife says. Theyd worked together, and Robert had stayed by her bedside
until her death. The narrators sole criterion for deeming Beulahs life pitiful is the fact that
Robert never knew what she physically looked like. For the narrator, the ability to see the
others appearance seems to be the defining element in a relationship.
The narrator tries to reflect on Beulahs life from her own perspective: she could never see
herself as Robert saw her, and she could never receive a compliment on her appearance. Whats
ironic about the narrators observation is that he himself can see, yet he fails to make his own
wife happy. The narrator assumes that he is more capable of making his own wife happy than
Robert simply because he can see. This assumption reveals that the narrator isnt aware of the
difference between seeing and understanding.
2. I stared hard at the shot of the cathedral on the TV. How could I even begin to describe
it? But say my life depended on it. Say my life was being threatened by an insane guy who
said I had to do it or else.
This quotation appears near the end of the story when Robert asks the narrator to describe the
cathedral that appears on television. Before this, the narrator has successfully described a
parade in Spain in which people were dressed as devils and skeletons, but he doesnt have any
idea how to describe a cathedral. The task seems impossible for the narrator, who doesnt have
the words to describe what he sees. In a way, this is a crisis moment for the narrator, who
realizes that he couldnt describe a cathedral even if his life depended on it. The scenario he
imaginesa crazy man forcing him to describe a cathedralis absurd and comical but reflects
his sense of panic. Even though he can see the cathedral, he cant describe what he sees because
he really doesnt understand it. Only by drawing the cathedral with his eyes closed can the
narrator bridge the gap between seeing and understanding.

How to Cite This SparkNote

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2007.

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MLA
Their conversation is awkward, especially when she mentions Wickham, a subject Darcy
clearly wishes to avoid (SparkNotes Editors).
APA
Their conversation is awkward, especially when she mentions Wickham, a subject Darcy
clearly wishes to avoid (SparkNotes Editors, 2007).
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Table of Contents
in-depth analysis of The Narrator.
in-depth analysis of Robert.