We might also question the cause of this change in the narrator. They obviously have the narrator’s wife in common as the most important woman – now Robert’s wife has died – in each of their lives. Both men like whiskey and, it turns out, smoking weed. Robert had a wife he was close to but he lost her the narrator has a wife, but in many ways he is more lonely than Robert, despite this. There are obviously some interesting parallels between the two men. His moment of deepest insight comes at the end of the story when he closes his eyes while finishing the drawing of a cathedral. While watching the programme on cathedrals and talking to Robert, who cannot see the images on the screen, the narrator comes to realise how little he has observed of the world around him. Nowhere is this clearer than in the ending to the story, which is where most critics and students of ‘Cathedral’ focus the majority of their analysis (and speculation). And ‘Cathedral’ is as notable for what it doesn’t tell us as for what it does, and the narrator’s account of his evening spent with Robert and his wife invites us to ponder further questions. Carver himself expressed a dislike for this term, but we can certainly see a line between someone like Ernest Hemingway and Carver’s own short stories. Raymond Carver’s work is often associated with the term minimalism, a literary technique marked by a simple descriptive style (often utilising short, clipped sentences) and spare dialogue.
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