The stories of the American writer Raymond Carver seem at first glance to be devoted to purely everyday topics, but in reality they reveal serious social problems. Something like this is written all over the internet. Firstly, I didn't believe it (a simple short story, a few characters, everything is clear, no metaphors or personifications, etc.). But behind this truly banal basis hides a large number of questions and issues: the theme of light and darkness, pure love and relationships between people, sight and blindness, faith and its projection in real life. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Raymond Carver's style is minimalism. It uses simple language, ordinary situations and characters describing their real, empty lives. Nothing special. Carver does not describe the characters in the story and does not even mention where the story takes place. In fact, we don't even know the name of the narrator who is one of the main characters. The purpose of writing in such a style is to give readers the chance to guess what the characters may feel and have, to develop an understanding of emotions and impressions. characters through short exclamations and sentences. Raymond Carver's style is dirty realism (whiting style in America of the 70s-80s of the 20th century). Carver demands such economy of words that each description is subject to a basic minimum. The rest is devoted to the dialogues of striking characters, simple and banal. As a representative of dirty realism, he focused on middle-class characters and depicted the harsh realities of their ordinary lives full of sad memories and problems such as drug and alcohol abuse, divorce and the death of loved ones. And with such minimalism, Carver's story (several pages) contains serious drama, even tragedy, of its "exceptional" characters. A simple story. Simple people. Simple language. These are the rules of Carver's new "Cathedral." There is an absence of broad descriptions, beautiful adjectives and adverbs, extended metaphors and monologues that give some shades of meaning. In contradiction, he lets facts, actions and events dictate most of the approach. For example, the beginning of the stories is too simple: “This blind man, an old friend of my wife, he was going to spend the night. » Carver focuses on the simple events, the routine of daily life. The story is written in the 1st type of narration. The narrator, whose name we don't actually know, drinks too much and has a misunderstanding with his wife. Paradoxically, he tells us a story but during the conversation between the blind man, the narrator and his wife, the second takes the passive position (he says a few words to show that he was present in the room). It seems that he could not understand not only his wife but also himself until Robert opened his eyes to his real problems to show how he can live in a kind of communion with the world and what connections he can talk with him. Is there love in the story? At first glance, there is. The couple has so much misunderstanding and reluctance to get along that it seems like they live in different worlds. The woman wants to talk, she needs this communication. I think that's why she records blind letters and tries to compose poetry. Her husband does not realize the importance of supporting her. He listens to his poems but without any pleasure or even without emotion. By contrast, here is another couple in the story - Robert and his wife. We don't know muchthing about their relationship but this brief description of the death of Robert's wife says a lot. Until death, Robert does not leave his beloved and he keeps half of the coin (another half that he put in the hearse) which reminds him of his love. I imagine an ordinary person living with primitive, limited instincts in their mind. His life is like a sticky liquid being sucked out, day by day. One day, in such a stable world, someone invades it who doesn't fit into its framework at all. From the beginning, we know the blind man. We easily recognize that the narrator does not like the blind man and blind people in general. Blind. Vision is the most important organ of perception and “such” existence in darkness terrifies the protagonist. There is disgust, incomprehension, but only until the moment when this someone opens another world to him, a world without borders or frames, where the essential is what the soul feels, and not the body. How can a blind person explain to a blind person what it looks like that he has never seen in his life? This is why Robert asks to draw a cathedral, with flying buttresses, but the narrator only shows him the walls and the cold stones. Then he asks to close your eyes and allow the blind to draw people with their hands into the cathedral, to put the soul in alignment with the walls and stones. It shows a world that can only be seen by those who close their eyes. The spiritual world and it is much more beautiful than the visual one. To believe and feel, eyes are not necessary at all. The theme of light and darkness is also an interpretation of the theme of sight and blindness. This is seen through the character of Robert, who is literally blind. Literally! But he is not seen as one who lives in darkness but, paradoxically, in light. However, we could understand that the narrator, who could actually see, is metaphorically "blind" in several respects. Indeed, Robert teaches the husband to close his eyes, to feel and see with his senses and to draw. At the end of the story, they both draw a cathedral with their eyes closed lying on the ground. There is a hope of strengthening the light in the narrator's soul through the cathedral as a symbol of light. This manifests through his selfishness and also his inability to see how his actions impact his relationship with his wife, who is increasingly annoyed by his insensitivity. and rudeness. Another paradoxical thing is that Robert has two televisions (one colored and one black and white) and could understand which television he is watching (or listening to). This is further proof that Robert is not blind and helpless. It tries to obtain new information through other perceptions of the body. A cathedral is a symbol of faith, religion and the process of drawing becomes the climax of the story. The sighted hero tries to explain to the blind man what a cathedral is. . He talks about stones, architectural details, dimensions. But for a blind person, these are not characteristic signs, for him the idea of ​​objects is constructed from other categories: a cathedral has been built for centuries, people begin to build it, knowing that only the grandchildren or even great-grandchildren can see the result. “Do you believe in God? he asks the man, as he struggles to choose words understandable to the blind, to describe another architectural detail. When describing the cathedral, the husband thinks of the house: “I drew a box that looked like my house.” This is a very strong image of the transformation of a house into a cathedral, because the cathedral is made, built for people. That's why the blind man asks to attract people near the building. The essence becomes visible.