The central way in which this excellent short story
challenges our notions of what it is to be handicapped is through the use of a narrator
who is at best unsympathetic and at worst rude towards his blind guest. For example,
when Robert arrives, the narrator does little to encourage conversation by providing
short answers to Robert's questions about his life, before turning on the TV, which,
considering Robert's inability to see the image and the way that it closes down
conversation is very rude. Consider the following
quote:
From
time to time, he'd turn his blind face toward me, put his hand under his beard, ask me
something. How long had I been in my present position? (Three years.) Did I like my
work? (I didn't.) Was I going to stay with it? (What were the options?) Finally, when I
thought he was beginning to run down, I got up and turned on the
TV.
However, in spite of the
dismissive way in which the narrator thinks about Robert and treats him because he is
blind, the end of the story shows the way in which the narrator himself has changed his
notions about blindness and how he now is able to "see" something of the reality of
being blind. This epiphany comes when he draws a cathedral with his eyes closed with
Robert holding on to his hand so that he can see what it is like. When Robert asks him
to open his eyes, note what the narrator does:
My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I
knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside
anything.
The narrator comes
to experience first hand the way that being blind can actually not be a restriction, but
something that can profoundly liberate you. Showing the narrator's change of heart and
his epiphany is the key way in which the narrator challenges views about being
disabled.
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