An Analysis of Fuzzy Narration in Raymond Carver’s Novel Cathedral

Abstract

Raymond Carver is a famous American contemporary minimalist short story writer, known as “the most influential short story writer after Hemingway”, “Chekhov of America”, and “minimalist master”. Cathedral is recognized as a mature work of him. Carver used a series of fuzzy narration techniques to describe the pale and boring life of American middle and lower classes, making the novel have a minimalist aesthetic. Starting from the perspective of fuzzy narration and taking Carver’s Cathedral as the text, this paper makes a concrete induction and analysis on the fuzzy narrative techniques in order to deeply understand Raymond Carver and minimalism.

This paper is divided into four parts: the first part briefly introduces Raymond Carver’s life background and his unique writing style; the second part introduces the status of Cathedral and the world depicted in the book; the third part introduces fuzzy narration from various angles; the forth part specifically takes the content of various fuzzy narration techniques used in Cathedral as the object of analysis, then generalizes and summarizes them.

This study makes a deeper analysis and excavation of Raymond Carver and the minimalism he represents, thus paving the way for later research and study on fuzzy narration.

Key words: Raymond Carver; fuzzy narration; Cathedral; minimalism