75 pages • 2 hours read
Cathedral
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Story 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 3 Summary: “Preservation”
On Valentine’s Day, three months earlier, Sandy’s husband loses his job. Ever since, he lives and sleeps on the couch, collecting unemployment and going to the occasional unsuccessful job interview. Although Sandy loves him, his inaction repulses her, and she does not understand why an otherwise healthy man is unable to move. He watches television, reads magazines and newspapers, and occasionally thumbs through a book called Mysteries of the Past. One day, Sandy picks up the book and reads about a man who was frozen and preserved in fairly good condition for two thousand years in the Netherlands. Every day when Sandy comes home from her job, her husband—always dressed for work—has coffee waiting. Sandy is dismayed when a friend at work tells her about her uncle, who took to his bed at the age of 40 and stayed there for 23 years. Embarrassed by her husband, she imagines what it would be like if he never moves from the couch.
One afternoon, Sandy returns from work and sees her husband laying on the couch with his eyes closed, either sleeping or pretending to sleep. She goes into the kitchen to discover that the refrigerator stopped working and all of their frozen food is melting. Sandy screams at her husband, who comes into the kitchen. He looks at the fridge and assesses that a Freon leak caused the malfunction, lamenting that the appliance is only ten years. When Sandy demands that they buy a new one, her husband reminds her that he is out of work. He finally agrees to look for a used fridge in the classified ads. Ignoring her husband’s reluctance, Sandy insists that they go to an appliance auction that evening.
Sandy resolves to cook the frozen food before it fully expires, beginning with pork chops which she plans to serve for dinner before the auction. When the pork chops are done, she calls her husband into the kitchen to eat. He stands and stares as water is pools on the table and floor. The sight of her husband’s bare feet surrounded by water transfixes Sandy, as he takes his plate and returns to the couch.
Story 3 Analysis
In “Preservation,” Sandy’s husband is frozen ever since he lost his job. Like the frozen man in the book, he is mostly lifelike, wearing his work clothes every day, but with nowhere to go. The author does not explain the source of the water at the end of the story. While it may simply be water leaking from the broken fridge but it may also be a metaphor for melting what is figuratively frozen—specifically, the husband. An auction is a particularly proactive method of buying something and requires boldness and quick thinking, both of which would likely be daunting to a depressed man who is unable to get off the couch. Therefore, the melting may occur because Sandy refuses to continue enabling her husband to stay frozen by insisting that he go to the auction. The friction in the story arises because Sandy cannot comprehend how her husband can simply stop moving. But at the end of the story, Sandy cannot move either. As the food in their refrigerator thaws and rots, so will their marriage if the husband continues to sit on the couch, thawing Sandy’s cold resentment into hot anger.
As to whether Sandy’s husband will eventually snap out of his paralysis, the story is ambiguous. On one hand, the broken fridge causes the husband to get up to examine it, his first significant movement in months. On the other, when he opens the newspaper to look for a listing for a used fridge, he notably skips over the job listings. Moreover, his unwillingness to even eat dinner anywhere other than on the couch does not bode well for his future prospects.
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By Raymond Carver
