Essay On Cathedral

The Understanding of a Blind Man In the short “Cathedral” the narrator is the character that is being evaluated on how he changes his ways throughout the course of the story. In the story a blind man comes to visit after the death of his wife. When the narrator learns about this he is not thrilled about the visit. The narrator’s wife is all to excited about the visit which does cause some tension between the two. The narrator changes slowly through the course of the story, but he does make a huge change from being narrow minded to open minded. The story beings by the narrator coming right out with his closed mindedness by saying the blind was coming to visit and that all he knew about blind people came from movies. The narrator said how

The change the narrator encounters is presented when he decides to stop saying “I” and begins saying “We”. He has given not only Robert some sense of identity but also himself. To add to their bonding is when the narrator’s wife leaves the room allowing the two men to bond without her judging the narrator. Then when the wife comes back into the room she falls asleep and her robe opens open exposing her thigh, and the narrator instead of becoming anxious he realizes Robert cannot see so why close the robe up. The two then begin to watch a documentary about cathedrals and this is where the narrator goes through his final and biggest change. Robert asks him to draw a cathedral so that he can see it, and the narrator does so allowing Robert to place his hand over the narrator’s hand showing a sense of intimacy. This is where the narrator allows himself to completely open his mind to new things. “Cathedral” is a really good example of how one can let go of the insecurities. The narrator allows himself to open to Robert the blind man, and really get to see that he is no different from the narrator. In the story the narrator makes his dynamic change by allowing himself to be able give and receive identity. He lets go of everything that he knows about blind people to actually learn that they are no different form himself. He realizes that nothing is as it seems, and he just has to look deeper than the