The wife is concerned that the narrator is being insensitive towards Robert, and she becomes increasingly irritated with him. When the narrator offers Robert some dope, she is even more upset. However, by the end of the story, it is clear that she has grown to love Robert as much as her husband does.

The narrator is unable to describe a cathedral to Robert and thus fails in his attempt at communicating, while Robert is able to communicate by touching the narrator's wife.

The two main characters in "Cathedral" are the narrator (who is unnamed in the story) and Robert, a blind man and an old friend of the narrator's wife. Between these two characters, there is a strong tension, and although the reader would have trouble spotting exactly why, we can track some personality traits for both of them that contribute to creating and maintaining the tense atmosphere. First, Robert is friendly while the narrator is not; second, Robert makes his wife laugh whereas she does not laugh when her husband talks; third, although jealousy never appears in the story—one can easily spot that it exists between them; last but not least, one character has eyesight but he doesn'