Essays on Cathedral

Rarely does a story portray self-discovery and personal enlightenment as honestly and tenaciously as Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral.” This story depicts the encounter between an initially close-minded narrator and a free-thinking blind man. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that both characters need each other...

In Raymond Carver’s short story, “Cathedral,” the close-minded speaker is forced to spend a civil evening with a blind man. Initially, the narrator despises the blind community. However, after interacting and connecting with the blind man in the story, the speaker finds himself with a...

In Raymond Carver’s short story “A Small, Good Thing,” the Baker’s helplessness is caused by his apparent class status and by an unknown financial stability, which results in a sense of isolation and loneliness. The baker resolves his sense of helplessness when he realizes that...

In Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, humans are described as exhibiting three types of coping mechanisms in order to relieve themselves of the suffering that they experience. One of these mechanisms is intoxication: to intoxicate one’s self with various physical substances in order to become...

Raymond Carver’s preferred method of delivering information to readers in his short story “Cathedral” is one that is entirely coherent with the underlying theme of the impact of alienation and isolation upon those who fail to master the art of communicating with others. Carver employs...