The characters that Raymond Carver creates in his short story “Cathedral,” simply put, are more than they appear. At first glance, the husband of the story seems like a shallow, simple character. A character one might find more at home as a secondary character in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, perhaps, or in any novel written by Stephenie Meyer. However, when read more closely, the depth of the character of the husband begins to show through.
We get the initial and most revealing view of the husband--a character who we never learn the actual name of--through the narration of the story, as it is told in the first person through his eyes. The reader learns about the character merely through the ways he describes things. We listen to his tone, his inflections, his somewhat bitter and sarcastic comments. (And yes, I say “listen” despite the fact that the reader never literally hears a sound but for the turning of the pages.) The husband’s thoughts are short and clear. Never flowery. Always efficient. At first read, throughout most of the novel, the husband seems aloof, slightly bitter, quiet, and almost apathetic. He is reluctant to let the blind man, Robert, sleep at his house. He has a drinking problem. He smokes cannabis. He isn’t religious. He leads what some may call an uneventful, slightly depressing life. He simply lives from day to day, forcing himself through the routine of everyday life. To those who don’t take the time to read into the character, it must seem like he doesn’t care about anything at all.
This idea of the husband not caring, however, is a false one. In fact, the character who seems so rough and apathetic on the outside shows the reader his thoughtful half throughout the course of his narration. The first one and a half pages are dedicated not to himself, or the setting, or the theme, but instead to telling the reader all about his wife. The fact that he’s bitter about “the man who’d first enjoyed [his wife’s] favors,” (4) is a sign of how much he actually cares about her. How much the wife actually cares for her husband, however, is a different essay. Despite what her actual feelings are for the man who married her, the husband cares for her more than he ever lets on in the story. He tries to be hospitable to the man his wife is obviously more interested in than her own husband and later even tries to protect her modesty in front of him. These are not the actions of a man apathetic to his wife.
The husband is also a character who can easily put himself in another person’s situation. (The exception to this power is, of course, the fact that he cannot put himself in the mind of a blind man. At first, anyway.) When he hears the story of Robert’s wife, Beulah, his heart actually goes out to the woman. He feels for the “pitiful life this woman must have led.” (15) He even is shocked and saddened over the thought of “a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one.” That’s a powerful, emotional thought no two-dimensional character could ever conceive.
Strangely enough, the character of the husband reminds me of another complex character found in a famous novel of one of Raymond Carver’s main influences. That character: Jake Barnes. That author: none other than the influential Ernest Hemingway. Both characters seem apathetic and both are almost completely disillusioned with the world around them. Both are fans of alcohol. And both have much more complex emotions than they actually let on. Not to get on too much of a tangent, but Jake Barnes, like the husband, sets up this exterior shield which hides his true self from others around him. The two characters both have an amazing amount of love (Yes, you heard correctly, Ernest Hemingway wrote about love!) within them that they are either afraid or unwilling to show. Anyway, while not important to the character development in the short story, I merely wanted to point out that were these two characters ever to meet, they would have “such a damned good time together.”
We never learn the name of the narrator, this husband who has a much deeper side than he lets on, but we learn so much more about this character’s character that one hardly cares! His name seems almost trivial in the grand scheme of things. And what’s amazing is that we learn all about this character merely through his narration of one simple evening spent with his wife and her blind friend. And think about it. If the husband did not have this hidden, softer side, he would never go through the powerful transformation that he does at the end of the story. Where would the be story be then?(819)
Why is the husband so reluctant to express this softer side to those around him?
Why *don’t* we learn the wife and the husband’s names?
Why *do* we learn Robert and Beulah’s names?
What’s the deal with the whole dinner scene?
What happened at the end of the story? How? Why?
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3 comments:
When you read your essay in class, I at first noticed how much of your style reflects that of Raymond Carver (and yes, I did notice this before the class discussion but I withheld from bringing it up at the time because I wanted to put it in my comments). So although you've heard it half a dozen times before, once again, props on the simple sentences. I couldn't find much wrong with this essay except perhaps a couple technical errors. In formal writing, try to avoid using contractions (I noticed that you used "that's" at the end of your 4th paragraph). Also, you don't need a comma at the end of your quote in your 3rd paragraph. Hopefully Mr. Coon will have some more insightful advice, but I thought this was and excellently written essay.
Matt--I thought that, overall, your blog was very witty and very well written. While some of the clever remarks that you made had nothing to do with the story (i.e. first paragraph's comment about Pride and Prejudice and Stephenie Meyer—I should mention that I happen to like her books!!), they certainly made me laugh. Speaking of that same sentence, it is an incomplete sentence and should have either been attached to the end of the previous sentence or been made into an independent sentence.
I thought you supported your thesis quite well throughout the blog with good examples from the story. I will admit that upon my first reading I thought your paragraph about The Sun Also Rises was completely random. However, I later saw the title with the acronym, and I finally understood. I think it would have been easier to make the connection if you had spelled out the title of Hemingway's wonderful novel, but maybe that's just me.... Anyway, that said, I thought the parallelism between the narrator and Jake Barnes that you drew was insightful, thoughtful, and very smart. To be honest, I never would have made that connection on my own. Kudos!
Last but not least, I thought that the beginning of your final paragraph could have used a little more work. That first sentence read a bit awkwardly to me; the phrase "but we learn so much more about this character’s character that one hardly cares" is just a little confusing I think, and, if I remember correctly, you even stumbled a little on this sentence in class when you read it aloud.
Once again, Matt, very nice job! I very much enjoyed reading this essay. Even when I read it, it sounded like you (which was a good thing, by the way). Keep up the good writing!
MJPT--I was going to ask what SAR was, but I just figured out that it's Sun Also Rises. So I'll just say something I noticed in this essay and your P & P essay. Tangents work better, I think, in blogs or in speech than they do in the 600 word expository essay. The short essay, both because of its length and its purpose, serves to focus on and develop a single precise idea and therefore does not easily admit digressions.
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