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Cathedral (1983)

• Raymond Carver

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Raymond Carver (1938-1988)

• Influential short story writer of the last
  decades of the 20th century influence comparable
  to Hemingways in the earlier part of the century
• Born in Clatskanie, Oregon, raised in Pacific
  Northwest, married girlfriend right after high
  school (divorced in 1982)
• Blue-color background worked as janitor, sawmill
  worker (like his father) he often wrote about
  lower middle class workers
• Struggled with alcoholism, like his father quit
  drinking in 1977

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Raymond Carver (1938-1988)

• got college degree and received M.F.A. from
  prestigious University of Iowa Writers Workshop
  (from which Flannery OConnor had graduated)
• Taught at several universities, including
  Syracuse University in New York state
• Married poet Tess Gallagher in 1988 died that
  year of lung cancer

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Raymond Carver (1938-1988)

• His style has been called minimalist for its
  simple, spare narration Carver rejected the term
  because it smacks of smallness of vision and
  execution.
• Some early stories are bleak but later ones, like
  Cathedral, developed a more positive, spiritual
  dimension

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Vision vs. Reality

• Cathedral is about vision vs. reality in
  several senses
• Vision of cathedrals vs. narrators drab reality
  (job, married life)
• Vision achieved in spite of real blindness
• Television (mass-media) vs. real life
• Art (drawing) vs. real life/ T.V.

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Narrators Reality

• Marriage My wife finally took her eyes off the
  blind man and looked at me. I had the feeling she
  didnt like what she saw. I shrugged (2371) My
  wife and I hardly ever went to bed at the same
  time (2375)
• Job How long had I been in my present position?
  (Three years.) Did I like my work? (I didnt.)
  Was I going to stay with it? (What were the
  options?) (2373)

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Narrators Vision

• Alcohol and marijuana Let me get you a drink. .
  . . Its one of our pastimes (2371) Every
  night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I
  could before I fell asleep. . . . When I did go
  to sleep I had these dreams (2375).
• Question How many drinks do the characters
  consume during the story?
• Continual TV watching

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Narrator and Robert (1)

• Stereotypes of the blind
• And his being blind bothered me. My idea of
  blindness came from the movies (2368).
• A beard on a blind man! Too much, I say (2370).
• Dark glasses (2371)
• Blindness and sexuality Imagine a woman who
  could never see herself as she was seen in the
  eyes of her loved one (2370).

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Narrator and Robert (2)

• Jealousy of the blind mans intimacy with his
  wife
• he touched his fingers to every part of her
  face (2368) wife wrote poem
• The tapes hearing vs. seeing

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Cathedrals Narrators Description (1)

• Narrator speaks without drinking (2375)
• (See pictures in following slides)
• They reach way up. Up and up. Toward the sky.
  Theyre so big, some of them, they have to have
  these supports. To help hold them up, so to
  speak. These supports are called buttresses

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Chartres
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Chartres
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Cathedrals Narrators Description (2)

• (See pictures in following slides)
• Theyre massive. Theyre built of stone. Marble,
  too, sometimes. In those olden days, when they
  built cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God.
  In those olden days, God was an important part of
  everyones life. You could tell this from their
  cathedral-building (2376).

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Reims
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Beauvais
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Cathedrals Narrators View

• The truth is, cathedrals dont mean anything
  special to me. Nothing. Cathedrals. Theyre
  something to look at on late-night TV (2376-77)
• I guess I dont believe in it. In anything.
  Sometimes its hard (2376)
• Notice blind mans embarrassment asking about
  belief

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Drawing the Cathedral Art as Experience (1)

• He closed his hand over my hand (2377)
• I put in windows with arches. I drew flying
  buttresses. I hung great doors. I couldnt stop.
  The TV station went off the air (2377).
• He moved the tips of his fingers over the paper,
  all over what I had drawn, and he nodded (2377).
  

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Drawing the Cathedral Art as Experience (2)

• On the blind mans request, narrator closes his
  eyes and keeps drawing his fingers rode my
  fingers (2378)
• When blind man tells him to look, narrator keeps
  his eyes closed I was in my house. I knew that.
  But I didnt feel like I was inside anything
  (2378)

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Drawing the Cathedral Art as Experience (3)

• Compare Contrast to
• TV experience of cathedrals viewer is dependent
  on the cameras perspective (2375)
• Blind man touching the wifes face (2368)
  narrator and his wife both help the blind man to
  see through physical contact jealous of one
  another

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Art as Experience

• Does the narrators helping the blind man to see
  make him (like) an artist? Or is the blind man
  the artist, inspiring him to draw?
• Does the narrators story help us to see? As
  readers, are we like the blind man?
• What is Carvers story suggesting about
  fiction/art?

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Carvers Style

• Simple, direct
• Colloquial
• Statements of what happens, how things work (See
  2370, last ) I saw my wife laughing as she
  parked the car. . . .
• Carver shows the minute details of reality to
  help us to see
• Similar to the narrator and his wife helping the
  blind man see the details of the cathedral, the
  face