Optimism in Rent from Joey Aloi on Vimeo.

I call dibs on The Joker.

Hey guys,

Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov

From Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment

I think the narrator in "Cathedral" did end up changing by the end of the story. At the beginning, he was extremely skeptical of the blind man, and really just seemed to want him out of there. At times, it almost seemed as if the narrator was making fun of the blind man, by asking questions such as "Do you know what side of the train you were sitting on?" Robert, nonetheless, continued to impress the narrator by breaking the stereotypes that the narrator had against blind people. I noticed the change in the narrator's character after he was finished smoking with Robert, and they were discussing televisions, and Robert said "I can tell the difference between color televisions and black and white televisions...Don't ask me how." I think it was the constant breaking of these stereotypes that eventually convinced the narrator that Robert was just another human being, just like him (the narrator).