Cathedral by Raymond Carver

In his, “Fleeing the Wasteland of Alcoholism: Alienation, Recovery, and Hope in Raymond Carver’s Cathedral” (2011), critic H. Collin Messer argues that Carver’s later stories “move beyond the hopelessness of the alcoholic’s predicament” by providing for such characters the “real possibility” of “relationship and recovery” (44). Messer fails to mention, however, the masterpiece of Carver’s final collection, the titular “Cathedral,” in his analysis.  Your job, then, is to devise and defend an argument that either supports or refutes one of Messer’s claims as it applies to Carver’s “Cathedral.” Be sure to support your analysis with carefully selected textual evidence, but do make sure to avoid unnecessary plot summary. You should assume, after all, that your reader is familiar with the literature.