The_Cathedral

The narrator in “Cathedral” goes from a guy who didn’t understand why a blind man was coming to his home, to a person who found his inner self. This happens within a few hours after the narrator’s wife falls asleep. He starts to mingle with Robert and as they were watching a TV show about cathedrals. As Robert asks the narrator if he is a religious person the narrator starts to tell him how he doesn’t believe in anything. I think that the narrator started to change his mind whenever Robert and him started talking and getting to know each other. At first he’s really judgmental of Robert saying how he didn’t think blind people could smoke, or how Robert doesn’t wear dark glasses covering his eyes, which makes him look weird. Later on in the story the narrator then starts to tell Robert about how cathedrals are meaningless to him because he is a nonbeliever. While he was drawing the cathedral, he put in much time and effort to make it as good as he could imagine. When doing this he starts to get pulled into the drawing; starting to open up his inner self and show it in the drawing. A cathedral is displayed as a house of worship; a place that you can express yourself to God without having any troubles. I think that while he was drawing the cathedral he opened himself up to a place that he is comfortable with and feels like he can be himself at. This place has a deeper meaning to him; a meaning of the type of person he is. When he was done drawing Robert had told him how his drawing was ‘something’. I think this meant that Robert could connect to him and relate to what he was feeling at that moment in time. He realized how the narrator was connecting himself to the cathedral. The author causes us to realize this at the end of the story when the narrator says, “My eyes were still closed. I was inside my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything” (103). The narrator meant this as he has a weightless, placeless feeling that makes him realize he just had an epiphany. Cathedrals are a place for religious offering and worshiping, the narrators drawing of a cathedral has showed him a deeper place in his mind that he can see past what is directly evident.