It is generally agreed that the story is the narrative form par excellence within contemporary North American literature and that Raymond Carver is the indisputable master of this register. In each story of Cathedral the latent presence or intrusion of “extraordinary terrors within an ordinary existence” is revealed (Cathleen Medwick). His characters are of ordinary stock: manual workers, underlings, the unemployed and the helpless. They achieve, despite of themselves, a certain heroic dimension, giving their stubborn testimonies of a relentless reality. His style is concise and laconic; it has been said that Carver inaugurates a new vision, a new method and a new tonality.