Cathedral

1.       Who is the main character or protagonist of the story?

n  The narrator, who is unnamed throughout the story, is the protagonist, or the main character.

2.       Make a quick list of the character’s physical, mental, moral, or behavioral traits. Which seem especially significant to the action of the story?

n  Prejudiced, a smoker and a drinker, seems insecure. Most important to the story seems to the prejudice, which is present in both his actions and thoughts toward the blind man and his wife’s name. He judges before he even meets the man, and he judges the wife although he never has the change to meet her.

3.       Does the main character have an antagonist in the story? How do they differ?

n  The main character’s antagonist is his own prejudice against the blind man and his inability to connect with him, and through extension, his wife, all because of that initial prejudice.

4.       Does the way the protagonist speaks reveal anything about his or her personality?

n  You can tell he is slightly pessimistic. He looks at what can go wrong as opposed to opening his mind to new things. He likes things he can see. Blindness makes him uncomfortable, religion makes him uncomfortable. You can tell by many of his thoughts that he is the kind of person who needs physical proof.

5.       If the story is told in the first person, what is revealed about how the protagonist views his or her surroundings?

n  (see the above)

6.       What is the character’s primary motivation? Does this motivation seem reasonable to you?

n  It seems as though the narrator is motivated mostly by his wife and wanting to please her by being kind to the blind man. However, as the story progresses, his motivation changes and by the end it seems as though he actually wants to understand this man and what life is like for him. This curiosity is present in his question, “Something has just occurred to me. Do you have any idea what a cathedral is?” (90). At first the motivation seems halfhearted, like he doesn’t really care to make a true attempt to connect to the blind man, but by the end the motivation becomes more reasonable.

7.       Does the protagonist fully understand his or her motivations?

n  It doesn’t seem as though he understands them at the end of the story since it just happens almost automatically, yet in the beginning it is quite clear that he is only doing this for the woman and is aware of that fact.

8.       In what ways is the protagonist changed or tested by the events of the story?

n  By the end of the story he has become more accepting and open to other ideas, and other types of people. He realizes that his prejudices may be incorrect, and he realizes that he doesn’t understand the world as well as he previously thought. By the end, he has changed.