Readings for 01/21/18

I really enjoyed the stories of Sonny's Blues, Where I'm Calling From, and Cathedral.  I especially enjoyed the Cathedral piece.  In Cathedral, the narrator, who we can only best call by the name of Bub, is very jealous because an old friend of his wife is coming into town.  This old friend is a blind man who she used to work for years ago, during her first marriage.  Right away you can tell that the narrator has a hard time showing sympathy for other people, because he can't seem to realize that the reason why his wife wants him to be nice to her old friend is because his wife had just passed away.  The author does a wonderful job of bringing us inside the mind of the narrator by allowing him to describe the scenario and characters of the blind man and his wife.  It is here that we really get a glimpse into the heart and mind of Bub, and he comes off as not the nicest of people.  As the story progresses, the blind man, who is named Robert, the narrator and the narrator's wife all have dinner and have their fair share of drinks and a little smoke of some of the good stuff.  During this whole interaction you could really see some of the narrator's resistance and awkwardness in interacting with Robert. The narrator's wife falls asleep after smoking some and this is where Bub and Robert are able to actually start connecting.  This is the point of the story where Bub starts to let some of his walls down.  Robert asks Bub to describe to him what he's seeing on tv, which is this program about cathedrals.  Bub tries his best, but he soon realizes it's hard to describe something to someone who has never seen it before.  Robert comes up with the idea of having Bub help him draw it on paper, so he could get a better idea in his mind of what he was talking about.  Bub joins hands with Robert, and together they trace the picture of the cathedral.  Bub's wife wakes up very surprised at what she sees, because she sees her husband unlike she has probably ever seen him before. This is a story about a character learning how to change, learning how to show some type of feeling for someone other than himself.  It leaves you with hope that the character can perhaps continue to turn things around in their life and become better people to those around them.  It gives you hope for a happier ever after, as much of one that could be realized anyway.