Anxiety And Space Structuring In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

An American short-story writer and poet,Raymond Carver(1938-1988)contributed to the revitalization of American short story during the 1970 s and 1980 s with his five major collections of short stories.His third significant collection of short stories Cathedral(1983),generally perceived as his best,exhibits a feature of spiritual communion,thus less bleak and less constricted than the earlier ones.Cathedral bears the brushstrokes of matter-of-factness to fixate on the grassroots everyday life,their domestic dilemmas and inner struggles,reflecting Carver's concern of those confused people in post-war American society,Carver being one of them.This thesis intends to apply Gabriel Zoran's space model,Joseph Frank and David Mickelsen's ideas of textual space and Henri Lefebvre's spatial triad,to discuss three levels of structuring space in five selected stories from Cathedral in order to illustrate how the recurring sense of the protagonists' anxiety is portrayed.Firstly,this thesis examines the textual space in “Preservation”,“Careful” and “A Small Good thing”.In these stories,the use of repetition or the same image for coherence and emphasis builds a unified sense of anxiety among the non-linear storyline.Secondly,this thesis discusses the topographical space within “The Compartment” and “Cathedral”.The compartment window serves as a metaphorical boundary between the outside world and the protagonist,whereas the cathedral transcends its textual existence and becomes the symbol of communication.The anxiety intertwined with the loss of acquaintance and the epiphany of spiritual communication attach themselves to the topographical structure.Lastly,from the perspective of social space,this thesis examines several relationships of the protagonists,namely the father-son relationship,that of married couple,the divorced,and the strangers,and the anxiety beneath them in “The Compartment”,“Preservation”,“Careful”,“Fever” and “Cathedral”.The thesis concludes that Carver,in his calm and pared-down narrative style,provides readers with the covert anxiety underneath people's life and work.In essence,Carver has portrayed a group of protagonists facing the cruelty and the loneliness of modern life.Herein,he encourages readers to listen to the protagonists' cry of despair and anxiety and inspires them to ponder over how to redeem themselves to findhis/her inner cathedral.