Blog Post #4 - Short yet not so Sweet

To me, "Cathedral" is perhaps the most complex of the short stories we have read so far. In that it has a plot which seems so normal that it might have occurred, "Cathedral" forces readers to move away from what seems to be reality to search for the author's purpose. The narrator's pessimistic, cantankerous attitude is hard to interpret, as readers aren't given much background information on him so that they can discover what made him so cranky. To me, little in this story is deceptively simple. However, why the narrator had a sudden change in heart and decided to talk to the blind man still seems unanswerable. While he initially hated the thought of even having the blind man in his house, the narrator seems to be enlightened and uplifted by him in the end. The title of this story, "Cathedral," relates to the subject on which the narrator first inquires about blindness. However, as a cathedral is a place of worship, the title suggests that a spiritual change occurred within the narrator.