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“Cathedral” (1983)

“Cathedral” (1983). Raymond Carver. Raymond Carver (1938-1988). Influential short story writer of the last decades of the 20 th century; influence comparable to Hemingway’s in the earlier part of the century

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“Cathedral” (1983)

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  1. “Cathedral” (1983) Raymond Carver

  2. Raymond Carver (1938-1988) • Influential short story writer of the last decades of the 20th century; influence comparable to Hemingway’s 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

  3. Raymond Carver (1938-1988) • got college degree and received M.F.A. from prestigious University of Iowa Writers Workshop (from which Flannery O’Connor 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

  4. 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

  5. Vision vs. Reality • “Cathedral” is about “vision vs. reality” in several senses • Vision of cathedrals vs. narrator’s 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.

  6. Narrator’s Reality • Marriage: “My wife finally took her eyes off the blind man and looked at me. I had the feeling she didn’t 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 didn’t.) Was I going to stay with it? (What were the options?)” (2373)

  7. Narrator’s “Vision” • Alcohol and marijuana: “Let me get you a drink. . . . It’s 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

  8. 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).

  9. Narrator and Robert (2) • Jealousy of the blind man’s intimacy with his wife • “he touched his fingers to every part of her face” (2368); wife wrote poem • The tapes: hearing vs. seeing

  10. Cathedrals: Narrator’s Description (1) Narrator speaks without drinking (2375): (See pictures in following slides) • “They reach way up. Up and up. Toward the sky. They’re so big, some of them, they have to have these supports. To help hold them up, so to speak. These supports are called buttresses”

  11. Chartres

  12. Chartres

  13. Cathedrals: Narrator’s Description (2) (See pictures in following slides) • “They’re massive. They’re 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 everyone’s life. You could tell this from their cathedral-building” (2376).

  14. Reims

  15. Beauvais

  16. Cathedrals: Narrator’s View • “The truth is, cathedrals don’t mean anything special to me. Nothing. Cathedrals. They’re something to look at on late-night TV” (2376-77) • “I guess I don’t believe in it. In anything. Sometimes it’s hard” (2376) • Notice blind man’s embarrassment asking about belief

  17. 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 couldn’t 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).

  18. Drawing the Cathedral: Art as Experience (2) • On the blind man’s 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 didn’t feel like I was inside anything” (2378)

  19. Drawing the Cathedral: Art as Experience (3) • Compare & Contrast to: • TV experience of cathedrals: viewer is dependent on the camera’s perspective (2375) • Blind man touching the wife’s face (2368): narrator and his wife both help the blind man to “see” through physical contact; jealous of one another

  20. Art as Experience • Does the narrator’s helping the blind man to see make him (like) an artist? Or is the blind man the artist, inspiring him to draw? • Does the narrator’s story help us to see? As readers, are we like the blind man? • What is Carver’s story suggesting about fiction/art?

  21. Carver’s 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

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