Cathedral Lesson Plan

How would you describe Marge? Why do you think she becomes so interested in the Holits family?

Students should quickly describe Marge as lonely and isolated, both from the other residents of the apartment complex, because of her job as manager and an understandable disapproval of their ways of living, and from her husband, who is stuck in a routine of ignoring her as much as possible. She is a kind woman, by and large, polite and courteous, and when she is judgmental it is in ways with which the reader may sympathize—feeling disturbed by Spuds’s decision to play so many films of his dead wife in front of his new one, for instance, or by the divorce sweepstakes. Students...