Acceptance in Cathedral

In Cathedral I was particularly struck by the way in which the narrator would brush away such irksome items as his wife’s past with relative ease. His casual brush-off method of dismissing his wife’s previous friends and lovers is a sure sign of insecurity and more than likely a feeling of inadequacy. When the issue of her previous marriage arises he mentions it quickly because of its relevance to the story but goes no further into the details than is necessary. He also ridicules or belittles anything that he can not understand and does not care to. When he talks about the blind man he makes a point to stereotype blind people saying that “the blind moved slowly and never laughed.” (1) The narrator has obvious problems accepting things in his life and living with the past. He makes no mention of his own life before his marriage and only mentions his wife’s past out of expository need. His blatant disregard of the things with which he is not comfortable is just his way of not dealing with them.

His wife’s last marriage seems to be a point of particular chagrin for him. When he is forced to mention her soldier fiancé his words even read with a sense of rush and ire. He even breaks off the thought with a simple etc which conveys his particular dislike of the subject. He also makes a large inclusion of the fact that his wife became disillusioned with their marriage and eventually tried to kill herself. The fact that he dwells more on his wife’s dissolving marriage and attempted suicide than he can on the marriage itself seems to convey a strange sort of satisfaction to the reader; as if he is happy that his wife was so unhappy that she resorted to suicide. His immature approach to his wife’s first marriage and their own marriage is just his way of shielding himself from the rest of the world, a world that he is forced to acknowledge with the introduction of Robert into his life.

When the blind man arrives he spends a large amount of his time ridiculing Robert mentally and doing things that strike his wife as disrespectful or unnecessary. When the narrator informs us of the conditions of Robert’s wife’s death instead of maintaining a respectful air he goes on about how she could wear whatever she wants and Robert wouldn’t even care. His disrespect over the issue of the death of a man’s wife from cancer is a sort of last straw from the reader’s point of view. After that little insight into the narrator’s mind I personally lost all faith in his ability to be civil to anyone and felt a sort of pity that he could not appreciate life without cynicism. In the end he seems to start truly understanding and accepting things. When he moves to cover his wife’s exposed leg it shows that he at least considers the feelings of his wife and Robert, of course he then thinks better because of Robert’s handicap. This moment showed a small but noticeable shift in his character and he seems as though he can recover from his own handicap of cynicism. In the end we see the narrator accepting the blind man and his ways. When they are drawing the cathedral together we see his disposition go from skepticism to tolerance to acceptance. That last moment when he refuses to open his eyes is his last hurdle to accepting the blind man and the rest of life’s little quirks. He is accepting the blind man’s handicap, if only for a moment, and releasing his own.