These are too many questions for one forum space. Still, I'll try to answer some of it. The blind man is really a case of the blind being able to "see" more than the living, or at least the narrator. From experience, he can tell that the narrator is not comfortable around blind people. Robert allows the narrator to draw the cathedral and, through the drawing, see his vision. I think he gets a name because he is such an integral part to the vision of the Cathedral. Through Roberts’s description, it is the narrator that becomes "sighted". The narrator actually feels Robert's experience. The narrator sees beyond just a drawing. He sees time and space, as he never believed existed.