Freaks

Raymond Carver´s Cathedral is a recollection of different stories. The first one, Feathers, is a tale of two work friends. One invites the other, wife and all, to dinner in his house. This is the first time that either meets the family of the other, and as soon as Jack and his wife arrive to his friend´s house, things start becoming weird. They have a peacock, an ugly, hidden baby, and bizarre ornamentation. After strange conversations, mishaps with the peacock and with the baby, Jack leaves with his wife and never mention it again. Neither do Jack with his work friend. Despite still being close, they never mention that night again and keep their relationship on a superficial level, notmentioning their families ever again. This only makes us wonder: Why? Of course it was strange, but weird encounters such as these are not uncommon today. Stranger than all of these mishaps, stranger than kept teeth, stranger than the dinner is the fact that all relationships were cutbetween the two families. Is Carver perhaps not mentioning the worst incident of all? Or is it that it is all a mockery of society´s prejudices? Either way, the outcome of the story is by far stranger than the dinner party.