A Message to Humanity

I have just finished furiously reading Cathedral by Raymond Carter, although it seemed more like I was eating the text than reading it. I absolutely loved this short story about a very cynical man who befriends, to his great surprise, the blind friend of his wife. Throughout the story I could not get over just how rude the narrator was being when describing his apprehensions of having his wife's friend visit because the man is blind. I am a very accepting person who has seen just about every walk of life in my short but exciting twenty years here on earth, and sometimes cannot grasp exactly where people are coming from with their prejudices. The narrator has never met this man before and his wife, who I assume the narrator loves, has spoken so highly of this man for years and still he did not like the man solely because he was blind and apparently blind people make the narrator uncomfortable.

Having never actually MET a blind person before, he jumped to outrageous conclusions about blind people based solely on films, and the opinions of others. I did not appreciate his attitude until the climax of the story, when the two work together to blindly draw a cathedral. This story melted my heart - the image of the two very different men sitting together, stoned, drawing was not by any means expected and revived my faith for the narrator, and for people in general. The author is not very far off with how easily a perception of someone can change, and how easily we can connect if all we do is open up to one another. As Whitman talks of in Song of Myself, we are all from the same dirt, the same air and atoms and earth - why are we so quick to judge and so quick to lock out those we feel are different than us? If you keep pushing away everyone without a chance, you will end up a very lonely, bitter old maid, but that is very much my own opinion.

I would, and have already recommended this short story to anyone to read, because there is not a small audience for the message of this story. The audience in fact is all of humanity!

I am going to get back to reading now,

Cat