Guilt And Divorce In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

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Raymond Carver had many problems in his life that he seems to have interpreted into his short stories and poems. Many different authors have decided to take his writing apart and analyze how and where in his writing he has his personal guilt written into his work. Carver grew up with a father who was a drunk, and in a poor household that was very uneducated. Lucky for Carver, however, who decided to go to university and become a teacher, and later on finally get his works finished. In Cathedral, the narrator seems to be blinder than Robert, who is actually blind. While Carver was in his 20’s, after he got married at age 19, he began to become blind to all that was in front of him and started drinking. When he wrote Cathedral, the narrator is …show more content…

There is a point in life when readers decide that “many of his poems and stories are confessions of his sins” (Delaney) because of a point made that “he drank because he felt guilty” (Delaney). Carver was guilty because of his alcoholism and because he would rather write to provide for his family.The ironic thing about Carver becoming a writer is the fact that “he himself was extremely ignorant about literature” (Delaney). People might wonder why someone who was not good at literature would become a writer, let alone a professor at a university. Carver seemed to have a growing issue with his alcoholism. It eventually got so bad that he left his first wife and his two children, and went to live with Gallagher. Cathedral shows us that the narrator is kind of like Carver in a whole bunch of different ways. First of all, Carver and the narrator both have marital issues. The narrator’s marriage is falling apart quite like Carver’s was. Another similarity between the two is the fact that both of them are kind of mean. Carver was rude in his marriage and a typical abusive drunk towards his wife; not that the narrator was abusive, but he was definitely rude to people he does not

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