75 pages • 2 hours read
Raymond CarverCathedral
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1983A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
How Dysfunctional Families Trap Individuals
Each story concerns, in some way, the breakdown of a marriage or a family. In most cases, the couple stays together, resigned to the choices they make despite feeling trapped. Jack, the narrator of “Feathers,” feels that his wife is changed by the end of the story, but he does not see any option other than to stay with her and remain silent. Sandy’s marriage (“Preservation”) falls apart when her husband loses her job, and as she watches him give in to hopelessness and fear, she no longer finds him attractive. In “Bridle,” both Betty and Marge are trapped in different types of miserable marriages. Betty feels bound to her husband and his kids, no matter how far he drives the family into destruction. And Marge is stuck in a limbo of indifference where her husband does not seem to notice or respect her.
In some stories, the marriage breaks up, but the two people continue to return to each other. Wes and Edna (“Chef’s House”) had a very rocky relationship, and Wes’s alcoholism ended their marriage. Yet Edna returns to him and tries again, choosing Wes over a healthier relationship. Similarly, Lloyd’s alcoholism (“Careful”) destroys his marriage to Inez, but Inez still feels obligated to help him with his ear blockage and gives her number to the landlady in case Lloyd has an emergency. The narrator in “Where I’m Calling From” also destroyed his marriage with alcoholism, but as he works to get sober, he starts to call his wife in hopes that she will let him return home. For Carlyle (“Fever”), his wife won’t return but calls him repeatedly to interfere with his life.
Amid these damaged marriages, there are dysfunctional relationships with children, children as collateral damage, and children who disrupt their parents’ marriage. Jack (“Feathers”) never wanted children and finds that he has little affection for the son that his wife convinces him to help her create. Edna and Wes’s children (“Chef’s House”) stay away from their parents, uninterested in their reunion because they know that the relationship is unhealthy. Myers (“Compartment”) blames his son for turning his wife into an alcoholic and thus decides that he doesn’t really care for his son or want to see him. Holits (“The Bridle”) and Carlyle’s (“Fever”) children are abandoned by their mothers, leaving fathers to fill the void. For the characters in these stories, living difficult lives takes a toll on their relationships, but most are unable to see any better options than living unhappy lives.
Working-Class Dissatisfaction
Most of Carver’s characters belong to the working class. They labor at jobs that don’t pay enough to allow them to thrive and offer no chance for real advancement. Jack and Fran (“Feathers”) dream about financial success, but Jack knows that those dreams are unrealistic. The baker (“A Small, Good Thing”) becomes so miserable in his never-ending daily grind that he takes it out on a mother who forgot to pick up a cake, never imagining that her son died. For the narrator in “Vitamins,” his job is so meaningless to him, and he is so invisible as an employee, that he often shows up drunk. And while his wife Patti achieves a measure of success selling vitamins, that success reverses and causes intense stress and anxiety. The narrator in “Cathedral” answers Robert’s polite questions about his job by saying that he doesn’t enjoy it but sees very little chance that he will leave it for something more fulfilling. Throughout the story collection, work is simply a means to an end
For these blue-collar characters, unemployment is particularly devastating, often costing them everything. Although the characters usually have little passion or interest in their work, over time they define themselves as providers for their families. Sandy’s husband (“Preservation”) works in roofing, and when he loses his job, he cannot find work in the one area in which he has training and experience. Without his job, Sandy cannot see her husband the same way she once did. J.P. (“Where I’m Calling From”) decided immediately after high school that becoming a chimney sweep was his life’s path, but alcoholism makes it impossible for him to work. However, his wife still describes him to the narrator as being the best at his job. Holits and Betty lose their farm when Holits attempts to break out and get rich through horse racing. In the end, the responsibility falls on Betty to feed the family by working double shifts at a job she hates.
Disengagement and Loneliness
Most of the characters in the collection feel stuck in their circumstances and desperately alone. Some, such as the narrator of “Vitamins,” grow numb and disaffected. He views his job, cheating on his wife, and his wife’s suffering without emotion or concern. In “Cathedral,” the narrator expresses his unhappiness with his life through sarcasm and a refusal to take his wife’s emotions seriously. Myers (“The Compartment”) distances himself from the world after his divorce, and when he has the chance to reconnect with his son, cannot bring himself to feel any affection for him. Marge’s husband, Harley (“The Bridle”), disengages with his marriage and doesn’t notice or care that Marge is terribly lonely and dissatisfied. For these unhappy characters, alcohol and endless labor become coping mechanisms for their hopeless and dreamless lives.
Other characters respond to their lives by becoming emotionally raw, deeply aware of their own loneliness and desperate for human connection. In “A Small, Good Thing,” Ann’s life changes when her son is in a coma, causing her to feel separate and alone in her pain. Ann feels a kinship with Franklin’s family, as they also wait to learn if their child will survive. But the family is together, lost in their shared grief. Ann finds relief when she realizes that her husband shares her pain. The baker begins the story with a sense of disengagement, feeling justified in harassing a mother for ordering a cake that she doesn’t pick up. But when he learns that they have lost their child, the baker reengages and connects to the grieving parents. In a similar way, the narrator in “Cathedral” learns to reengage through his interaction with Robert.
Most of the characters remain unresolved in terms of their loneliness and sorrow. Patti (“Vitamins”) ends the story in a panicked waking dream about her stress at work while her husband, irritated, tells her to go back to bed. Miss Dent (“The Train”) experiences something enormous and potentially traumatic, but just as she steels herself to open up to the older woman’s prodding, the train arrives, and they go their separate ways. The three characters and the other train passengers are all too absorbed in their own lives to give more than passing notice to others. In Lloyd’s encounter with his ex-wife (“Careful”), she treats him like an obligation and then leaves him alone. He consoles himself by drinking and giving in to the ever-increasing loss of control. These characters who dwell on their loneliness and pain remain trapped in a perpetual cycle of disconnectedness.
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By Raymond Carver
