Response to Raymond Carver's "Cathedral"

Raymond Carver’s Cathedral

This is my first literary encounter with Raymond Carver or as the New York Times calls him, “the most influential writer of American short stories in the second half of the twentieth century.” In fact, Carver has even been compared to literary God’s like Ernest Hemingway and Stephen Crane. Needless to say, I had sky high expectations.

"Cathedral" is often regarded as Carver’s most famous work. On the surface, not much happens. The story revolves around three nameless characters. A husband, a wife, and a blind man. The main action is the blind man coming to stay with the married couple and the husband’s almost comic, stereotypical view and judgment of the man. The problem, however, is not the fact that the husband is a stereotypical narcissist but rather that he is emotionally ignorant. He is detached and unable to make any true meaningful human connections despite the fact that he is married. Only when he realizes that he can’t describe to the blind man what a cathedral looks like, and allows the blind man to help him draw it, does this connection begin to be made. It is in fact the realization that words fail him that allow him to gain an ounce of emotional intelligence and allow him to see the blind man as an equal. Notably, the most memorable and powerful sentence in the story is given by the blind man about the universality of human connection itself. In regard to the men that built the cathedrals that remain standing today he makes the observation that “The men who began their life’s work on them, they never lived to see the completion of their work. In that wise, bub, they’re no different from the rest of us, right?”

While I seldom read short stories, and while I admit that on the surface I was not impressed by the story, a second read allowed me to see that beneath the surface, "Cathedral" is in fact a revolutionary story about the essential need and want for human connection. As the old saying goes, don’t judge a book by its cover.