Narrator and point of view

The short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver is a first-person narration, conveyed solely from the narrator’s point of view.

The narrator, who is a character in the short story, presents Robert’s visit, his relationship with his wife and his wife’s past from his subjective perspective: “They talked of things that had happened to them—to them!—these past ten years. I waited in vain to hear my name on my wife’s sweet lips: ‘And then my dear husband came into my life’...” (p. 6, ll. 36-38)

The narrator’s malicious comments about Robert or his wife’s former husband makes his reliability questionable. This means that we cannot take it for granted that his observations are objective; instead, it seems like the narrator is projecting his frustrations on the characters: “Her officer—why should he have a name? he was the childhood sweetheart, and what more does he want?” (p. 2, ll. 20-22); “She and...