"Cathedral" is a short story written by American writer and poet Raymond Carver.
"Cathedral" opens with the narrator telling the reader in a conversational tone that a blind friend of his wife's is coming to visit them.
He then flashes back to the story of how his wife met the blind man when she worked for him as a reader.
The touch of his fingers on her face is a pivotal moment in her life, something the narrator does not understand.
Although his wife has maintained contact with the blind man for ten years, this will be the first time she has seen him since her marriage, subsequent divorce, and remarriage.
Robert, the blind man, has just lost his wife and will be travelling to Connecticut to visit with her family.
Finally deciding that the blind man is "beginning to run down," the narrator turns on the television set, much to his wife's dismay.
She leaves the room to get on a robe, and Robert and the narrator share cannabis, again much to his wife's dismay.
"Cathedral" is generally considered to be one of Carver's finest works, displaying both his expertise in crafting a minimalist story and also writing about a catharsis with such simple storylines.
The story affirms something.Bruce Allen of The Christian Science Monitor considered "Cathedral" to be "among the year's finest fiction," and he wrote, "The story is about learning how to imagine, and feel - and it's the best example so far of the way Raymond Carver's accomplished miniaturist art is stretching itself, exploring new territories.
"[3] Samuel Coale of The Providence Journal praised the way an "unpoetic soul" is able to describe the cathedral to a blind man: "Even in such nihilistic landscapes, epiphanies are still possible, and Carver makes us feel them with a quiet, smouldering joy that only such accurate and unblurred landscapes in fiction can produce.