Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver-A Brief Biography Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, to a saw mill worker father and a mother who worked odd jobs. Carver graduated from high school in 1956, then married and had two children before he was twenty. He and his family experienced difficult years as Carver struggled to develop a writing career while supporting his family. When Carver was at Chico State College (now California State University at Chico), he enrolled in a creative writing course that greatly affected him. Carver earned a B.A. degree in 1963 from Humboldt State College in Eureka and spent the following year writing and studying at the University of Iowa. As Carver became famous, he lectured on creative writing and English at different universities. However, his addiction to alcohol and smoking did much damage to his health. He died of lung cancer at fifty in Carver's short story collections include Will You Please Be Quiet, Please (1976), What We Talk about When We Talk About Love (1981), Cathedral (1983) and Where I'm Calling From (1988). Carver's five volumes of poems, some of which are: Near Klamath (1968), Ultramarine (1986), and A New Path to the Waterfall (1989). During the end of his life, Carver lived with the poet and short story writer Tess Gallagher and married her shortly before his death.

Brief Introduction to “Cathedral” The story is about the narrator initially feeling uneasy about taking his wife’s friend, a blind man, who comes to his house for overnight stay. After the meal, when he and the blind man are left alone watching a television program on cathedral, the blind man asks the narrator to describe what cathedral is. Unable to do so verbally, he draws a cathedral together with the blind man, and this unusual experience sets him free from his banal life into spiritual transcedence.

Question 1 What’s the man’s initial feeling about the visit of the blind man?

Answer 1 He feels bothered and not enthusiastic at all about the visit. His idea about the blind comes from the movies, and to him, the blind are slow and serious, led by seeing- eye dogs. It is obvious that he feels uncomfortable and strange with the coming visit of a blind person.

Question 2 Under what circumstances does the wife know the blind man? What do you think of the blind man touching her face and neck and she trying to write a poem about this? What does the husband think of her poem?

Answer 2 The woman needs money to get married and she finds the job of reading to the blind man. That’s how they get to know each other. Obviously there is no bias on the part of the woman against the blind man. She allows him to touch her face and neck. And she even writes a poem to express how she feels about this experience. The blind man’s way of reaching out and expressing emotions must be poetic to the woman. The husband does not think of her poem, and of her relationship with the blind man. He admits that he doesn’t understand poetry, or he doesn’t like poetry.

Question 3 What happens to the woman after she gets married for the first time? How does she keep contact with the blind man?

Answer 3 The woman follows her first husband, a military officer, from one base to another, then she is tired of this life and once even tries to kill herself. She divorces and gets married again. About a year later after her first marriage, she calls the blind man, after which they have been sending tapes to each other for correspondence.

Question 4 What details in the husband-wife conversation show the man’s prejudice and unfriendliness towards the blind visitor?

Answer 4 The husband says he is going to take the blind guest, who is not able to see anything, to bowling. The husband asks if the blind man’s wife is a negro.

Question 5 What are the names of the blind man and his diseased wife? What different opinions do the husband and wife have about their relationship?

Answer 5 They are Robert and Beulah. The wife feels sympathetic for Beulah has just died. She admires their love, their “inseparable” years together. The husband, however, find it hard to understand such relationship, a blind man never knowing how his wife looks like and a woman never receiving any compliment from the husband. His thinking “(s)he could if she wanted, wear green eye-shadow around one eye, a straight pin in her nostril, yellow slacks, and purple shoes, no matter” clearly shows his feeling. And the couple dividing the coins between the live and the dead, is pathetic to him. In one word, the husband feels sorry for them and he assumes a blind man’s marriage must be pitiable and pathetic.

Question 6 Why is it hard for the husband to accept that the blind man wears a full beard?

Answer 6 He must think that it’s pointless and ridiculous for a blind person to wear a beard since he is not able to see it.

Question 7 What does the husband feel about Robert’s clothes and eyes? Why does he wish the blind man had a pair of dark glasses? What would he impress you the most if you saw him?

Answer 7 The blind man’s dresses are “spiffy”, with the color of his slacks, shoes and shirt matching each other. His eyes, with “too much white in the iris”, and “the pupils moving around in the sockets without his knowing it or being able to stop it”, are “creepy” to the husband. A pair of dark glasses will conform to the husband’s idea about the blind and make him feel more comfortable being around them. I might also feel uncomfortable with his beard, and his dresses, and the way his eyes look. I might also share the husband’s tendency to reduce the blind one to the stereotype.

Question 8 Why is the husband surprised that Robert smokes? Pay attention to the repetition of the phrase “this blind man”.

Answer 8 His line of thinking is that since a blind man cannot see the smoke he exhales, he will not enjoy smoking. The phrase “(t)his blind man” is repeated to emphasize the point that the visitor does not conform to the husband’s stereotyped image of the blind.

Question 9 What does the narrator mean by praying about the phone and the food? Is he religious? How about the Robert?

Answer 9 He is making a mockery of the ritual of prayer before meal. He is not religious at all. The blind man’s lowering his head indicates he is a follower of the religious ritual.

Question 10 How do you understand “(w)e ate like there was no tomorrow”? Pay attention to the parallel sentences — “ We ate. We scarfed. We grazed the table.”

Answer 10 The eating scene gives the reader a sense of eschatology. The diners seem to be eating desperately, and helplessly; for them, eating seems to be a mechanical thing, not something to be enjoyed. The way they eat shows how they feel about life. But at the same time, the eating reminds the reader of the last supper, where Jesus Christ has the last meal before his crucification. The meal turns out a turning point in plot development, after which the husband and the blind visitor are left with each other; in terms of the theme development, the meal promises the husband’s being saved from loss and meaninglessness by the blind man’s efforts to reach out and communicate.

Question 11 What can we learn about the relationship between the narrator and his wife?

Answer 11 The couple go to bed separately and do not communicate with each other. The fact that they smoke dope and the man has bad dreams show that their marriage life is not going well. He is bored and cynical with life.

Question 12 What happens to the narrator when he is left alone with Robert? What changes happen to him? What does the narrator mean by saying “I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.”?

Answer 12 The two men smoke, watch television which runs a program on cathedral. Robert asks the narrator to draw a cathedral, and in doing so, the narrator feels absolutely elevated by the human contact with the blind man. In a sense the blind man saves him from his disillusionment of life. The husband no longer feels confined, his senses and spirit go beyond physical boundary — a house, blindness, life. Drawing the cathedral with the blind man, this husband feels transcends over his mundane and meaningless life.

General question 1 What is significant about the fact that the narrator and his wife do not have names while the blind man has a name?

Answer 1 The blind man is the main character of the story, and he is able to exert influence and change.

General question 2 What kind of a person is Robert? Summarize his personality.

Answer 2 Robert is a man who loves life. He watches color television, and wears beard, his clothes match in color, and he does not wear dark glasses. All these details suggest that Robert does not reduce his identity to a blind person and feel miserable about it. Instead, he loves to reach out to others, to feel the wife’s face and neck, to send tapes to her, to get married, to involve the husband into conversation and communication. In one word, Robert is capable of giving and loving, despite the fact that he is blind.

General question 3 What prejudice does the narrator have against the blind? Do you think he has an epiphany in the end of the story? Please explain.

Answer 3 The narrator, who is the husband, takes it for granted that the blind don’t smoke, they wear a pair of dark glasses, and they are not supposed to have beard, nor watch television, nor get married, which are totally pointless. He does have an epiphany in the end of the story. With eyes closed, he is able to feel with his inner eye the potential power of life and human contact.

General question 4 What does “cathedral” symbolize in the story?

Answer 4 In this story, “cathedral”, with flying buttresses and spires reaching up to the clouds, and people within, symbolizes the transcending power, the power of breaking through the wall between humans, the power of being able to sour above the life which looks trivial, mundane and meaningless.

A Website of Raymond Carver