Choose a significant short passage from "Cathedral" that captures the essence or theme of this work. You may choose dialogue, a descriptive passage, or a narrative excerpt. First, cite the quote, and then briefly (in one sentence) explain its relevance to the meaning of the work.

To find a quote that is significant to a text, first decide what theme you are going to discuss and then choose a quote that can act as a vehicle for discussion of that theme. What follows is an example, but after reading this example, you should look for other quotes that speak to this theme, or choose a different theme. For example, important themes related to this short story are alienation and loneliness.
The passage below represents the theme of the transcendent power of creativity and imagination in "Cathedral," and the discussion of it will serve as an example for your assignment:

"Are they closed?" he said. "Don't fudge."
"They're closed," I said. "Keep them that way," he said. He said, "Don't stop now. Draw."
So we kept on with it. His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now.
Then he said, "I think that's it. I think you got it," he said. "Take a look. What do you think?"
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.
"Well?" he said. "Are you looking?"
My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything. "It's really something," I said.

To discuss the significance of this short passage in relation to the theme, I would first give the context of the passage within the short story. What is happening in the passage that the details do not directly show? After explaining the context, point out specific words, phrases, or sentences within the passage that speak directly to the theme, and explain how they show the theme.
What follows is an example corresponding to the above passage.
In this part of the story, the narrator has been trying to explain what cathedrals look like to the blind man because they were the subject of a television show they were watching together. The narrator has just failed to describe cathedrals in a way the blind man can understand. He struggles to describe cathedrals because they symbolize faith in God with their structure, and the narrator does not have faith. He does not seem to believe in anything beyond physical reality, or what he can see with his eyes.
So the blind man has asked the narrator to draw the cathedral for him, guiding his hand in the cathedral's shape. The blind man knows he will be able to understand cathedrals better and imagine them if he can discover their shape through this exercise of moving his hands along the design. While they are drawing, the blind man encourages the narrator to close his eyes and draw so that what he imagines to create is not limited by what he perceives with his eyes.
The narrator comes to realize the power of the imagination in this moment of drawing, and to realize that his perception of reality is limited by concrete vision; if he closes his eyes, and uses the eyes of his mind, he can transcend reality for a moment. This is why he does not open his eyes to look at the paper when the blind man asks him to. This is also why he says that he feels he isn't "inside anything" at the end of this passage; in seeing with the imagination, he has, for a moment, transcended physical reality and his own limitations with regards to drawing.