Cathedral Closed?


Sorry if this is a repost. In the film, they don't explain why Cathedral was not used as a part of the regular housing anymore? Yes, they did say it was closed to keep in the Cubs, and we see the Cubs are dangerous. However, they don't explain why it was not used to house society?

I noticed Jessica was looking across a balcony at the rest of the city. Was it because of locale, and it was so far removed from everything? Or was it due to the city growing smaller, due to the cannibalism?


I thought you came up here to have a nervous breakdown. ..I decided not to have one.

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It's not made entirely clear in the movie, but it's possible that when the city was originally built, the cathedral may have been intended for religious worship. At some point "Carousel" became the religion - and the cathedral was no longer needed. But somehow, they confined all the "wayward" children there (Cubs) - just to keep them away from the rest of society.

I'll have to rewatch that scene to see Jessica looking at the city. The cathedral seemed pretty far removed from the rest of the city, so that may have been another reason why it was favorable to keep the Cubs there.

I don't think the city was growing smaller, though. They seemed to make a point about keeping up the replacement rate.

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Ohhhh! Gotcha! :) Thank you for the wonderful explanation! That makes so much sense.

Ever since I was a kid, I watched that part and just didn't make the connection. :) That is a very cool symbolism to show the breakdown in their idealized symbolism of the "utopian society". :)


I thought you came up here to have a nervous breakdown. ..I decided not to have one.

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In the book part of the problem was that systems were breaking down and were not repaired. It also was happening earlier-- in 2116, only 40 or so years after all the adults over 21 died.

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Cathedral, like Box, and like so many other aspects of the movie borrowed from the book, are quite disconnected insertions that have no real meaning unless you read the book itself:

"Cathedral: a festering sore in the side of Greater Los Angeles, an area of rubble and dust and burnedout buildings, a place of shadow and pollution, of stealth and sudden death. Cubscout territory. If Doyle cleared the bridge the cubs would take him. The kill would be theirs—and that was bad for the record.

Logan was well aware of Cathedral’s blood history. Of the runners who never came out. Of the muggings. Of the unchecked violence. Even the police avoided Cathedral. With good reason. They’d sent in a cleanup squad the previous summer to tame the cubs. Logan had known some of the men in that squad: Sanson and Bradley and Wilson 9, all good officers. They’d walked into the jaws of the crocodile and the jaws had closed. None of the squad survived.

You didn’t take chances in Cathedral."

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In the Cathedral plaza, the first cub they meet is called Mary, Mary two.
( It seems that Mary is an unpopular name in the future : )

Whereas the city has a thirty year rule, the cubs rule is half that, at fifteen.
So that those cubs over fifteen, are either murdered by their own or Sandmen.
The same 'age factor' termination system, but more violent and housed within the very same Dome.
One system with quasi-religious overtones and the other unsophisticated and dehumanised.

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Excellent explanation.

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