Cathedral
The dubious story of a blind man who stops by to visit a man and his wife, Beulah, which later brings up conflict between them, one of the main characters is the blind man, named Robert, and met back ten years ago when the wife was working for him as a reader. Robert and the narrator both sit down and close their eyes and begin to draw Cathedral, the tone of the whole story so as he draws on and on the whole time with his eyes closed, even after Robert told him to open them he keeps drawing, he then begins to feel something he has never felt before, he knows he is inside of his house letting this blind man guide him as he drew, he however felt like he was not really inside of anything at all.
The tone throughout this entire story is very hostile with a hint of uncertainty between the main characters specifically between the blind man and the narrator who holds most of the hostility towards Robert. The uncertainty happens when the man’s wife falls asleep with only a robe on and the robe begins to slip off of her leg but the man keeps putting it back up so Robert won’t see anything he shouldn’t be but the man is blind, he could not possibly physically see anything. Deep down he doesn’t feel like Robert is completely blind, so he wants to keep his wife from revealing herself to him to keep her privacy.
Also the narrator’s feelings towards Robert were full of anger and might have been a little bit of jealously since the blind man needed Beulah and she was right there reading to him and doing her job as his reader. The two had formed a bond by being around each other for a long period of time and her reading to the man might have made him have feelings for her by listening to her voice and how she would almost paint a picture into his mind when she would read. All of this might have made him angry from her having to spend so much time with Robert instead of himself.
Above all the tone changes drastically when the two men sit down and Robert wants the narrator to start drawing with his eyes closed and as he starts he keeps on going until the blind man finally tells him to open his eyes but he refuses and keeps drawing. After quite awhile he starts to feel this unexplainable feeling he gets and the narrator explains it as “It was like nothing else in my life up to now” and that’s when he sees what the blind man sees despite how he feels towards him, all he knows now is that he understands Robert and how he views the world.
The main character Robert, being blind plays a huge role in this story by him not being able to see what the couple’s facial expressions are and especially what the mans expressions are like when he is talking to them, so it leaves the blind man to just say what comes to mind. He has made it clear that he is a blind man, not just trying to pull a fast one on the man to fool him and that he has no idea that her robe is even falling off of the women revealing anything.
Robert character influences the narrator in a big way not by just talking to him and him listening but in a way that not many can understand, because he uses a way of art to allow him to see what he sees with his hands. As he writes the blind man guides him for a while and then lets him go on his own and that is when the narrator sees “it” nobody truly understands what it is but knows the feeling of it when it hits them.
Most importantly Robert’s role in this short story as the blind man just trying to visit his old from years ago but the narrator clearly doesn’t him being there, so he hardly joins in on their conversations and hardly makes an effort to open up to the man. Until Robert asked him to grab a pin and paper so they could start drawing, and it wasn’t till then that Robert finally got to him and got him to open up and talking to him more while letting him see what he sees when your blind.
The conflict between these two men at the beginning is a very rocky start with a
