How does the point of view affect our response to "Cathedral"?

It is clear that the first person point of view selected
is a rather interesting choice for this excellent story. However, I think that
deliberately choosing to tell the story through perhaps the most unsympathetic
character, the husband who appears to be deliberately rude to both his wife and his
guest, we see the transformation that the guest manages to bring about in the character
of the narrator that much more clearly because of his earlier
rudeness.

As the story begins, we see that even though
Robert has just lost his wife, the narrator is still rude about the way that he feels
threatened by the invasion of his personal space. He crassly jokes about taking Robert
bowling, and when Robert comes draws attention to his blindness by asking questions such
as which side of the train he sat on in his journey and then pointedly turns on the TV
when conversation runs dry.

However, in spite of this, it
is clear that the narrator's conversation with Robert, especially when he is asked to
draw a cathedral so that Robert can "see" what they look like, has a big impact on him,
triggering an epiphany as the narrator chooses to keep his eyes closed even when Robert
tells him to open them:

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But I had my eyes closed. I thought I'd keep them
that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do... 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 for
perhaps the first time in his life is able to empathise with another human being, and
his experience of blindness, albeit temporary, is actually something that is very
liberating for him. To have the story narrated from this character's point of view
allows us to appreciate and understand the massive change that the narrator experiences
through meeting Robert.