Best of Week: Cathedral

I'm going to be honest here, I didn't like this short story. What I did like, however, was the discussion it lead our class into. We talked about the preconceived notions that the narrator had about the blind man, and how he had to let go of them to have his epiphany. I'm not going to lie and say that I never use preconceived notions to judge something or someone, but it's a pet peeve of mine and I work hard not to do so. Many of the things he said about blind people were ridiculous to us, but many of the things we assume would seem ridiculous to others. It's cool that the story takes a man that the narrator had all of these negative emotions toward and made him the catalyst to the narrator's epiphany. It shows that you may need people who you originally passed off as not being useful or able to do something new. It makes me happy to see that the author thought about not only the realization that the story led the character to, but what it would hopefully lead the reader to.