What is blindness?
I read Cathedral by Raymond Carver.
Cathedral is set over the course of evening, an old friend of narrator's wife visits them after loss of his wife. Early in the story, we learn about this old friend named Robert from the narrator, Bub. Bub refers Robert as 'blind man', this comes from his rather discomfort in his disability.
[...] the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs.
He never stops to emphasize that Robert is blind man. Its discomforting for him, but also the only thing that interest about Robert. Bub is humorous, and makes joke even during serious conversatoins.
'Maybe I could take him bowling,' I said to my wife.
I think the major revelation that we learn about Bub is through his perspective on Robert's wife.
She died in a Seattle hospital room, [...]. They married, live and worked together, [...]. All this without his having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked like. It was beyond my understanding. [...] I felt sorry for the blind man [...] And then I found myself thinking what a pitiful life this woman must have led.
A blind man is a dead man to him. He is dead in his experience to life. He has no feel to earth, and no seneses.
Although Bub's dead man comes to life once's Robert arrives at their home. That picture of a blind man begin to fade. This blind man did not wear dark glasses. This blind man smoked without seeing the exhaled smoke. He could use his knife and fork on the meat. And to our amazement, he was ready to experience thing and full of life. For the first time, Bub was not seeing