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| "...his being blind bothered me." |
Cathedral is quite clearly a story about blindness, but rather than revolving around simply the physical inability to see, it speaks on other types of blindness as well. Right from the beginning of the story, with his cliche ideas about blindness and blunt, closed-minded attitude about the blind man and his wife, the narrator shows that he is very much blind, even emotionally stunted. He shows no wish to recover from his "blindness", saying that his wife's friend coming to their house is "not something [he] looked forward to" (32), and sounding very upset when he heard about his wife's out-of-the-ordinary experience with the blind man. The narrator's wife may be the person who most wants the blind man to come visit, but she is blind to the depth of her husband's unease and is trying to force two differing parts of her life together, choosing not to see the consequences that may arise from her choice.
This story also plays into the common idea that blind people are often able to "see" things that others can't, and can help guide those who are figuratively blind into a more aware or even enlightened state of being. The blind man opens the narrator's eyes to the world of a blind person, even just a bit, when he draws a cathedral with him. After they finish the drawing, the blind man asks him to "take a look" (44), and wants to know what he can see, or rather, if his perspective has changed any. The narrator was trying to show the blind man what a cathedral is like, but in the end it's the narrator who experiences a glimpse of a different life, without his judgmental blindness.
Works Cited:
Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2011. Print.
Photo of a Blindfolded Person. “Honoring Your Literary Blind Spot.” Behler Blog. Web. 12 Sept. 2012.
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