Cathedral by Raymond Carver

Title: Cathedral

Author: Raymond Carver

Genre: Short Story

First Publication: 1983

Language: English

Summary: Cathedral by Raymond Carver

It was morning in America when Raymond Carver’s Cathedral came out in 1983, but the characters in this dry collection of short stories from the forgotten corners of the land of opportunity didn’t receive much sunlight. Nothing much happens to the subjects of Carver’s fiction, which is precisely why they are so harrowing: nothingness is a daunting presence to overcome. And rarely do they prevail, but the loneliness and quiet struggle the characters endure provide fertile ground for literary triumph, particularly in the hands of Carver, who was perhaps in his best form with this effort.

Review: Cathedral by Raymond Carver

“Cathedral” is a widely anthologized short story written by Raymond Carver first published in 1983. The story centers around an unnamed narrator, his wife, and a blind friend of hers named Robert. The narrator is prejudiced against blind people and uncomfortable with Robert’s visit, but over the course of the evening, his attitudes and perspectives change as he connects with Robert in an unexpected way.

The story opens with the narrator telling us that a blind friend of his wife’s, named Robert, is coming to visit them. The narrator makes it clear from the opening paragraph that he is not looking forward to this visit, saying bluntly, “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me.” This establishes the narrator as being prejudiced against blind people and not open to this experience or getting to know Robert.

The narrator then gives some background on his wife and how she met Robert. We learn his wife worked briefly for Robert years ago, reading reports and books onto tape. This was ten years earlier, and the narrator never met Robert, but his wife has maintained contact with him primarily through audiotapes they exchange. The narrator again emphasizes Robert’s blindness and his discomfort with it, saying he does not know many blind people and asking, “What could a blind man ask of me?” This continues to build his character as narrow-minded about people different from himself.

As the narrator tells the story of how his wife met Robert, he reveals that his wife had marital troubles in the past. We learn she was married once before but divorced her husband after she discovered he was cheating on her. This brief detail shows the narrator is her second husband and suggests trust issues she may have struggled with in relationships. The narrator seems unaware of what significance this past betrayal may still hold for her, as he brings it up casually.

The evening of Robert’s visit arrives. The narrator describes watching his wife prepare various foods, anticipating how Robert will manage eating dinner without being able to see the food. This continues to show the narrator’s preoccupation with Robert’s blindness. When Robert arrives, the narrator carefully notes his dark glasses and walking stick, fixated on these symbols of his blindness. His descriptions suggest Robert looks capable and confident in navigating the world despite his blindness.

Over dinner, the narrator begins telling the story of how his wife and Robert first met through her past job. His wife interrupts, perhaps annoyed that her husband is telling Robert about his own life or concerned that he’s focusing too much on her ex-husband’s hurtful actions. This small moment shows potential friction in how the narrator and his wife relate to each other. As the evening goes on, she seems interested in connecting with Robert, while the narrator continues to keep a distance.

After dinner, the three move into the living room, where the narrator and Robert share a couple of drinks together as the narrator’s wife falls asleep watching TV. As the narrator continues describing interactions with Robert, he moves from blunt statements about his blindness to more nuanced observations about Robert managing life without sight, perhaps reflecting his growing understanding. The narrator feels Robert looking closely at him, even without sight, and senses an insightfulness that makes him self-conscious.

Robert asks to see, or experience, the narrator’s face with his hands. This request takes the narrator by surprise and makes him uncomfortable. However, he agrees. As Robert moves his hands over the narrator’s face and hairline, the narrator has a powerful moment of connection with someone quite different from himself. The sensory description slows down as, for a moment, the narrator tries to imagine what it might be like to navigate life without sight. He observes acute details, like how long Robert’s fingers are. No longer preoccupied by judgments about Robert’s blindness, the narrator begins to observe Robert more openly.

In this intense moment between two very different men, the TV show switches on just then to a late-night documentary about cathedrals in Europe. Both men are absorbed by the soaring architecture and shadowy mystery of the cathedrals. When Robert asks him to describe what he sees on TV, this opens up a surprising opportunity for a connection between them.

As the narrator tries to describe the cathedral images for Robert, he follows Robert’s guidance to describe the visual details more thoroughly. We sense the narrator being drawn into a fuller way of seeing and describing his world as he connects with Robert’s way of experiencing that world. Robert also shares his limited understanding of cathedrals based on what he thinks they are like through touch, showing the narrator how he builds an understanding of things like cathedrals from gathering many small sensory details about them over time.

This opens the narrator’s mind as he tries to bridge their differences in perspective to really communicate with Robert about what he sees. As the story concludes, the narrator is still trying to find the words to capture the soaring majesty of the shadowy cathedrals and convey their awe-inspiring beauty to his new friend Robert. Their connection through their different experiences of cathedrals transcends the blindness that separated them earlier.

Throughout the story, we see the narrator transform from someone closed-off, judgmental, and self-absorbed into someone willing to connect beyond surface differences. While earlier he was preoccupied by how blind people get around, by the end he enters Robert’s world, trying to translate visual beauty into tactile experience. This unexpected connection challenges all the narrator’s prejudices, showing how we can find common ground with people very different from ourselves.

Some key themes emerge in this deceptively simple story about a blind man’s visit for dinner. On the surface, the story critiques superficial biases like the narrator’s initial prejudice against the blind. But at a deeper level, this story explores broader themes like isolation versus connection in modern life, the limits of communication between very different people, and finding meaning across life’s divides through empathy.

Carver was known for his spare writing style, which relies on everyday details and understated emotion to drive home deeper truths. Raymond Carver does this masterfully in “Cathedral,” using an ordinary dinner invitation to reveal the transformation that becomes possible when we open ourselves to understand someone quite different from us. The story’s emotional power comes from this revelatory bridging of differences where two isolated individuals find a surprising connection.

The spare realism of Carver’s straightforward prose style is on full display here. He uses no overt symbolism. Cathedral works through the accumulation of precise, resonating detail—the brandy and ginger ale over ice, the narrator’s hand-drawing demonstration of cathedrals, the cathedral documentary’s discussion of naves and flying buttresses.Out of specific, familiar things, Carver builds a quiet profundity.

Within this realist style, narrative perspective is key. Telling the story strictly through the narrator focuses all events and details through his limited first-person consciousness. This frames the narrator’s transformation over the course of the evening as the central storyline, rather than a message about blindness itself. Through the narrator’s evolving perceptions, innumerable small details take on cumulative thematic significance in terms of communication, connection, and overcoming prejudice across divides.

For example, early on, the narrator expresses discomfort with Robert’s blindness, saying he prefers silence to the sound of the rolling skateboard Robert uses. Later, though, while watching the cathedral documentary, he is absorbed by the deep silence within the soaring cathedrals, paying closer attention to Robert’s experience. Contrasts like this subtly underscore the narrator’s shift in consciousness even before the climax, where he lets Robert trace his face with his hands.

The story also hinges structurally on three primary sections: the introductory buildup focusing entirely on the narrator and his prejudice, the middle transitional section where he observes Robert over dinner, and then the intimate denouement with the “seeing” his face moment and the cathedral documentary climax. This simple, rising action helps pivot point by point from distance to understanding.

The title “Cathedral” holds several layers of meaning. On one level, cathedrals symbolize the sublime, ineffable beauty in the world that the narrator struggles to convey to a blind man. But cathedrals also took on a broader cultural meaning in the 1980s as the AIDS crisis confronted society with death, stigma, and suffering—not unlike blindness. The story can be read more politically as bridging divides in understanding around homosexuality and illness. Ultimately, “Cathedral” suggests connections possible across many kinds of unfamiliar experiences.

Within its spare realism and precise detail, this widely resonant story tackles isolation, communication gaps, biases, and the struggle to move beyond superficial differences towards connection. The narrator’s small but extraordinary moment of intimacy and insight with a blind man opens subtly outward into larger questions of meaning, empathy, and the sublime that arise amidst the ordinary. Carver leaves these layers of significance implicit within the simple situation of an awkward dinner invitation, trusting readers to connect the larger threads. The result is a quiet masterpiece of revelation trimmed down to the lean essentials.