Summary and structure

Here, we will present you the summary and structure of “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver.

Summary

A married couple is expecting the visit of the wife’s friend, a blind man. The wife met the blind man, named Robert, ten years ago, while working for him during a summer. Since then, she has married an Air Force officer, divorced him and remarried the narrator. Throughout everything, the woman kept in touch with Robert, corresponding via audio tapes. Now Robert is visiting the narrator and his wife, following the death of his own wife.

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Structure

The short story is structured around a single event in the characters’ life – a visit by the narrator’s wife’s blind friend to the couple's home. The story is structured as a first-person account. It lacks a traditional plot line and has a zero-ending (which does not look like an ending or a resolution).

Title

The title of the short story, “Cathedral”, suggests the story might have a religious theme or that the events take place in a cathedral. However, in Carver’s short story, the cathedral functions as a symbol; it represents the cathartic (liberatory) turning point in the narrator’s life.

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Beginning

The story begins directly: the first-person narrator announces in a conversational tone that his wife’s blind friend is coming to visit them: “This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night. His wife had died.” (p. 1, ll. 1-2)

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Middle

The middle of the short story develops the narrator’s conflicts through various tension points. The narrator begins with a backstory about his wife’s friendship with Robert, the blind man. We find out that they met while she was working for him ten years ago and that the woman continued to correspond with him using audio tapes. The way the narrator describes their friendship shows frustration: “She’d seen something in the paper: HELP WANTED—Reading to Blind Man, and a telephone number. She phoned and went over, was hired on the spot.” (p. 1, ll. 14-16); “He sent her the tape. She made a tape. This went on for years. My wife’s officer was posted to one base and then another. She sent tapes from Moody AFB, McGuire, McConnell, and finally Travis, near Sacramento...” (p. 2, ll. 11-14)

An external conflict arises between the narrator and his wife, caused by Robert’s upcoming visit:

‘I don’t have any blind friends,’ I said.
‘You don’t have any friends,’ she said. ‘Period. Besides,’ she said, ‘goddamn it, his wife’s just died! Don’t you understand that? The man’s lost his wife!’ (p. 3, ll. 8-11)

As the narrator’s wife tells him about Robert’s marriage with the recently deceased woman, Beulah, the narrator continues to be prejudiced against Robert, although he also feels sorry for him.

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Ending

The story has a zero-ending. Because the story does not follow a traditional plot, it also lacks the resolution that would connect the strands of the narrative:

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