Editor's Choice
What figurative language does Raymond Carver use in "Cathedral" and what effect does it create?
Quick answer:
Raymond Carver uses figurative language in "Cathedral" to enhance the story's emotional depth and character dynamics. The narrator's use of slang, such as "lickety-split," adds color and energy to the dialogue. Repetition, as seen when the wife nervously repeats "sofa," conveys anxiety. Metaphors like "You’re cooking with gas now" illustrate the narrator's growing enthusiasm. These elements highlight contrasts between sight and blindness and facilitate connection, enriching the narrative with vivid imagery and nuanced character insights.
Figurative language uses words or techniques to communicate more meaning than the literal words themselves.
Carver gives the narrator a down-to-earth voice by having him use slang. An example would be his noting that his wife "sent the tapes off lickety-split." "Lickety-split" is slang for quickly. The term adds color and energy to the statement.
Carver communicates the wife's nervousness when the blind man first arrives by using repetition. She repeats the word sofa as she chatters to the blind man:
This is the sofa. We just bought this sofa two weeks ago.
Near the end of the story, when the blind man says "You’re cooking with gas now" he is using a metaphor , a form of figurative language. A metaphor is a comparison that doesn't use the words like or as. The blind man makes this comment as the narrator gets more enthusiastic in his drawing...
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of the cathedral. By likening the narrator's action to cooking with gas he means that Robert is really pepping along, just as a pot on a gas stove might.
The narrator uses another metaphor when he tries to describe the urgency he feels about having to describe the cathedral to the blind man when he doesn't know how. He compares his feeling to:
Say my life was being threatened by an insane guy who said I had to do it or else.
Much of the early part of the story is told relatively flatly, with little
figurative language. Therefore, when Carver begins to employ it more heavily,
when discussing Beulah working for the blind man, the first effect is that it
calls attention to that section, like a special effect. The next effect this
more vivid description has is that Carver shares telling details. They make it
easy to visualize the situation, which is a commentary on the blindness, and
they characterize both those characters described and the speaker.
The next batch of intense figurative language describes the blind man, and
again, it both allows us to picture him and tells us about the speaker's
character.
Later, the descriptions call attention to the difference between sight and
blindness (literal and metaphorical), and later still, when they are drawing,
the details and metaphors show the effort made in creating connections.