![]() The opening paragraph demonstrates that Carver's narrator may be somewhat ungracious, but he is also possessed of a mordant wit. I hope to demonstrate the ways in which Carver uses the devices of fiction within the difficult feat of allowing the protagonist to tell (if not fully comprehend) his own story. Yet Carver carefully employs the first-person perspective of the narrator to demonstrate - almost beyond his own self-awareness - to dramatize the protagonist's evolution over the course of the story. Eventually after consuming several scotches and some "dope you can reason with," the wife falls asleep on the sofa leaving the protagonist in conversation with the blind Robert, eventually leading to the muted but bittersweet conclusion of the story. The husband is resistant to the social occasion, but goes through with it - although his narration makes us privy to his thoughts (which are occasionally marked by a low-level hostility) or else offers wry and laconic descriptions of his own statements and behavior. ![]() ![]() Raymond Carver's short story "Cathedral" is narrated in the first person by the unnamed protagonist, and tells a deceptively simple story: the narrator's wife (also unnamed) has invited her former employer Robert, an older blind man recently widowed, to come for dinner and stay the night. ![]()
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