Theme and Plot in Raymond Carver's "Cathedral"

Introduction: Carver and the Short Story Form

Raymond Carver states that by the mid-1960s he had tired of reading and writing "long narrative fiction" ("On Writing" 46). Shorter fiction, he found, was more immediate. Flannery O'Connor expresses a similar idea in The Habit of Being: for her, the novel was a literary medium that could bog down all of one's creative powers. Turning to a short story was a way of escape: "My novel is at an impasse. In fact it has been at one for as long as I can remember. Before Christmas I couldn't stand it any longer so I began a short story. It's like escaping from the penitentiary" (O'Connor 127).

This mode of thought may help us understand why Carver turned to composing shorter works of fiction like "Cathedral," a work that acts as a brief glimpse into how one man's physical blindness helps another man begin to overcome his own spiritual blindness. Carver's thematic plots could convey meaning at alternate depths — both directly and indirectly. "Cathedral," for example, introduces the theme of blindness, personified by "this blind man" (Carver, "Cathedral"), but concludes by addressing the deeper theme of internal — or spiritual — blindness, much as Sophocles does in Oedipus Rex. While conveying meaning on a literal level, the host of the blind man in "Cathedral" presents a scene that is at once stylistically minimalist and yet tremendous in scope. This paper shows how the plot and theme of "Cathedral" relay simultaneous levels of meaning to the reader.

Plot as the Engine of Narrative

It was Aristotle's view that plot was the most important part of any narrative. Many modern narratives, however, use character, setting, or style to move a tale along. Instead of ordering a sequence of events with a beginning, middle, and end, modern narratives often jump back and forth between points in time or leave audiences without a resolution. Yet plot is what essentially encourages the reader to keep reading. If the reader has no inclination to find out what happens next, there is little hope that the narrative will be continued — no matter how interesting the characters, the voice, the style, or the setting.

The Theme of Blindness: Literal and Figurative

In a sense, Carver makes it easy for the reader to care about what happens next: the story is short, accessible, and complete — with a beginning, middle, and end. It is also doubly rewarding, with a theme that works on two levels: a literal level and a figurative level.

"Cathedral" is the story of an irreligious man — who may represent Everyman — who learns a spiritual lesson from a blind man: "…I had my eyes closed. I thought I'd keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do" (Carver, "Cathedral"). Blindness, of course, tends to emphasize internal sight over external sight: a looking inward rather than a looking outward. Just as Oedipus learns to look inward — learns who, in fact, he really is, literally blinding himself in the process — the loss of external sight becomes the beginning of internal sight, of knowing oneself. This is precisely what the blind man teaches his host in "Cathedral" as they draw the picture of a cathedral together.

Conclusion

"Cathedral" uses a thematic plot about a man compelled to draw a cathedral with his eyes closed to tell a story that is more deeply about the loss of external sight and the gaining of internal or spiritual sight. Carver delivers scenes of startling abruptness, and yet the ideas that linger and haunt call us to greater depths than what we first thought possible. Such short stories free us from the "penitentiary" of novel-length narratives, and act as shortcuts to revelation.