Cathedral was a very touching story; it has been told and retold many times to say the least. I think it really gets at the message that one cannot truly understand another man’s existence. We can never insert ourselves into someone else’s life or truly understand their emotions, or what inspires them. We can only begin to grasp others thoughts and desires by comparing them to our own. It also highlights the fact that what we do not understand scares us. The husband almost fears the blind man throughout the story; he is somehow threatened by him. Up until the end he does not understand what the world holds for the blind man. I think that often times when we see people who don’t have the things which we do it scares us. That is why our parents tell us not to talk to homeless people on the side of the road, or why addictions and like things are frowned upon. We do not understand them, but deep down we see elements of ourselves in them, we could be so unfortunate as to have the same weaknesses or disadvantages such as lack of sight, this idea cuts down to the core of our mortality. And accepting mortality is somewhat of a taboo in our society. At the end of the story the narrator experiences an epiphany, life is not set in stone, our experiences are our own but they are not any worse or any better than those around us. Everything in life is relative, our pain our suffering, our experiences define us. The narrator gets to glimpse into the experiences of another human being.
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