There is absence of wide descriptions, beautiful adjectives and adverbs, extended metaphors and monologues that give some shades of meaning. These are rules for Carver’s short story “Cathedral”. And with such minimalism, Carver story (several pages in size) contains serious drama, or even tragedy, of his ‘outstanding’ characters. As a representative of dirty realism, he focused on middle-class characters depicts the harsh realities of their ordinary lives full of sad memories and problems such as drug and alcohol abuse, divorce and death of the nearest and dearest. The rest is given to the dialogues of outstanding, non-complicated, unremarkable characters. Carver requires such a saving of words that every description is subjected to a basic minimum. Raymond Carver’s style is dirty realism (whiting style in America of the 70-80s of the 20th century). The purpose of writing is a such style is to give the readers chance to guess what might characters feel and have, to develop understanding the emotions and impressions of the characters through short exclamation and phrases. Actually, we do not know even the name of the narrator who is one of the principle characters. Carver does not describe characters in the story and does not even mention where the story takes place. He uses simple language, ordinary situation and characters describing their real empty lives.
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