Put Your Hand in the Hand: Thursday's Procedures, Part I

One of my favorite short stories is Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” and no matter what class I’m teaching, I’ll almost always find an excuse to use it. The story is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who’s anxious because a blind man—a friend of his wife’s from before he knew her—is coming to visit them. Our narrator isn’t a bad guy, but he doesn’t get out much, either, and he’s uncomfortable (to say the least) with anything that exists outside of his own narrowly-defined boundari...