The Obstacles of Life in the Works of Raymond Carver
In 1983 Raymond Carver released a collection of short stories in his book, Cathedral. One of his most highly regarded stories “Cathedral” came from this book, alongside other stories such as: “Chef’s House”, “Preservation”,“The Train’’, Etc… These stories provide its reader with various feelings and have a deeper meaning than what is on the surface.
Readers of Carver’s stories find themselves connecting easily with how he portrays just how easy it is for life to throw a curveball one’s way, for nobody is capable of living a perfect life, there are always going to be bumps in the road along the way.
Inside of “Cathedral” (the short story), the narrator is thrown into a situation he is not pleased about, after learning his wife’s blind friend, whose wife had recently passed away, is coming to stay with them for an unknown amount of time, the narrator has heard about the blind man before and holds a prejudice towards him because of his disability.
At first the narrator is very prejudiced towards Robert, the blind man, saying things like “At first glance, his eyes looked like anyone else’s eyes. But if you looked close, there was something different about them. Too much white in the iris, for one thing, and the pupils seemed to move around in the sockets without his knowing it or being able to stop it. Creepy.” Throughout the whole short story the narrator shows great character development. It is something a lot of people can relate too, someone walks into a room and the first thing that is noticed is their appearance, and a lot of people will begin to judge that person just based off of their appearance, the people don’t know what that man and what he has been through or how he views things, this is the case for “Cathedral” except that man is Robert and the people judging are the narrator.
Carver also uses the idea of unexpected obstacles dropping into the characters’ lives in his short story “Chef’s House”. This story is about a marriage that hasn’t worked out, The guy Wes starts renting a lake house in a beautiful wooded area from a guy called the Chef for really cheap. Wes then asks his ex-wife Edna to come spend a summer with him up at the new house, ultimately she does and they have a grand time enjoying the time they’re spending together, at the beach, cooking nice dinners, and sunbathing…
But
Chef has a situation that requires him to kick out Wes and Edna, and the once married couple reminisce about the summer they spent at the house, which, eventually leads them to reminisce about all the time they spent together and the children they had saying things like “Then I started talking about the kids. Wes said he wished he could do it over again and do it right this time.” The lesson here is that whatever happened in the past cannot be changed so don’t waste the opportunity for something like, spending time with children or being a better dad, when it presents itself.
Carver does a great job of showing how quickly something so awesome and enjoyable can come along and abruptly end because of someone else. Obviously obstacles are gonna pop up in people’s lives, but it’s how they’re handled in this story is what makes it interesting.
The same idea is also displayed in Carver’s short story “Preservation,” where the narrator’s (Sandy) husband is recently laid off from his job and struggles to find a new occupation. The husband stops sleeping in their bed and sleeps on the sofa ever since losing his job. Being home all day all he does is stay on the couch. Sandy has a talk with one of her friends about it at work, and she talks about her uncle doing something like that; “Her friend told her about her uncle in Tennessee — when her uncle had turned forty, he got into his bed and wouldn’t get up anymore.” When Sandy returns home from work she finds her husband in his usual place on the sofa but also finds that their refrigerator has broken down and will need to be replaced. Sandy and her husband look for an ad for a refrigerator in the paper and find one that is being auctioned off that very night. This causes Sandy to flashback to her childhood where her father used to take her to farm auctions.
The whole story is a domino effect, one bad thing keeps happening after another to this couple. The fight to keep going on with life is there though and Carver does a great job showing how resilient this couple is.
The short story “The Train’’ kind of diverts away from the theme of all these stories, but also doesn’t at the same time, It is sort of just a variant of what can happen in someone’s life. “The Train’’ goes off of the theme: don’t judge someone because you don’t know what it’s like to be in their shoes.
The story starts off with the narrator (Miss Dent) holding a gun to a guy’s head listening to him cry and plead, eventually Miss Dent leaves the man and heads straight for the train station, attempting to leave town. The train takes a really long time to arrive and there are no signs saying when the next one will arrive. An old man and a middle-aged woman walk into the train station, and after an awkward interaction, they all sit and wait for the train to arrive.
Miss Dent can’t help but overhear some strange conversions and even gets dragged into a few such as ““You don’t say much,” the woman said to Miss Dent. “But I’ll wager you could say a lot if someone got you started. Couldn’t you? But you’re a sly boots. You’d rather just sit with your prim little mouth while other people talk their heads off. Am I right?” All the while having a gun inside of her purse
Raymond Carver ties that story (The Train) and “Cathedral” together using the idea of judgement and not knowing what is going on in other people’s minds to play into the reader’s life and it makes us as a reader sit back and wonder how many times we’ve held prejudice towards someone. When reading Raymond Carver’s short stories, it’s clear to see he likes to incorporate a lot of situations that are bumps of the path of life, and he also finds a way for every character to cope or solve the problems differently. Which definitely makes his stories interesting to read, If you’re looking for some short stories to read I strongly recommend Raymond Carver’s.
