The Writer Within: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Raymond Carver's "Cathedral"

In Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" the narrator of the story is unhappy with his life. He seems to go through the motions in his job and his marriage, using drugs and alcohol to get by. According to psychologist Sigmund Freud, the largest part of the mind is the unconscious, which is the source of our motivations (Wikipedia Freud). I believe Carver consciously and unconsciously reveals a great deal of his real-life needs and experiences with his marriage, career, and history of alcoholism, through the narrator of this story.

Alcoholism was no new concept to Carver who was raised by an alcoholic father. There are many instances of casual drinking in "Cathedral," which shows Carver's familiarity of drinking for pleasure. However, in his life, drinking turned from a pleasurable experience to a necessity as Carver fell into alcoholism during his adult years while trying to raise a family and begin his writing career. Eventually, Carver became so severely afflicted by his alcoholism that it took him over three years, during which he was hospitalized three times, to finally overcome it (Wikipedia Carver). With so much drinking going on in the story, it would be sensible to predict a similar future for the narrator and his wife. The drinking, however, is so mindless and it is written in such a comfortable way, that it may actually be an unconscious effort for the writer to relive the pleasures of a drinking life through his narrator, without the dramatic effects of alcoholism that he faced in reality.

I believe the wife of "Cathedral" has a strong and negative impact on the narrator. His love and respect for her is evident throughout the story but also evident is his need for her appreciation, which sometimes shows as jealousy towards her blind friend Robert. When the narrator gives a summary of his wife's history he says, "and of course she told her blind man about it. She told him everything, or so it seemed to me" (Charters 91). His contempt for the blind man shows in the words he chooses. Later, while socializing with Robert, the narrator tells us, "I waited in vain to hear my name on my wife's sweet lips: 'And then my dear husband came into my life'-something like that" (95). Clearly, he has a conscious need for an outward display of his wife's affection.

In "Cathedral" the narrator's wife is not plainly a villain, but in her subtle actions she is shown to have some responsibility for her husband's grief. After their marriage, the wife continues a friendship with Robert on a very personal level. She grows to admire Robert greatly, and outwardly, and her admiration for her husband is very small in comparison. This not only creates jealousy in the narrator, but also diminishes his self-esteem. In addition to this outside relationship, the wife shows her insensitivity to her husband with her "irritated" and "savage" looks and irrational reactions to his attempts to socialize with her friend.

This character wife's immature, insensitive behavior may in fact come from Carver's personal experiences with his own wife. Carver married Maryann Burk at the age of 19; she was 16 (Wikipedia Carver). The narrator's wife shows immature behavior, similar to what one could expect from Carver's teenage wife, throughout the story. In one instance she says, "If you love me...you can do this for me. If you don't love me, okay" (Charters 92). Whether this fictional wife represents Carver's real wife is unknown, but it is possible that she at least represents his interpretation of his wife, confused as he could have been during his years of alcoholism.

Another factor that apparently causes the narrator emotional turmoil is his job. He summarizes his conversation with the blind man: "How long had I been in my present position? (Three Years.) Did I like my work? (I didn't.) Was I going to stay with it? (What were the options?)" (Charters 95). Clearly the narrator feels trapped on a career path he doesn't want to be on. Carver faced a similar struggle during his efforts to become a writer. He was all too familiar with the experience of working a dead-end job and feeling hopeless about his career life. To support his family, Carver was forced to work various low-paying jobs as a janitor, deliveryman, etc. It wasn't until 1967, 10 years after he married Maryann, that he finally began to break into literature and writing. He and his family moved to California so that he could take a textbook editing position. However, even that job ended badly, as he was fired due to his "inappropriate writing style" (Wikipedia Carver).

Though "Cathedral" is a work of fiction, you can plainly see, upon investigation, that Carver's life is reflected in his characters-the immature wife, the drinking, and the hopelessness. However, "Cathedral" is no hopeless story. Perhaps, in the process of writing it, Carver resolved some of his own emotional turmoil regarding the unpleasant events of his life, because with all his misery and melancholy, the narrator is not without hope in the end. Furthermore, just as Carver eventually made a success of his love of writing, and overcame his alcoholism, his narrator found hope, and perhaps even faith, in his depiction of a cathedral to a blind man.

Works Cited
Carver, Raymond. "Cathedral." Literature and its Writers: A Compact Introduction to Fiction,
Poetry, and drama. Ann and Samuel Charters. 4th ed. New York. Bedford/St. Martin's,
2007. 90-101.
Raymond Carver. (2007, September 25). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20:05,
September 27, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Raymond_Carver&oldid=160312832
Sigmund Freud. (2007, October 2). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23:51,
October 2, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sigmund_Freud&oldid=161809878