The Cider House Rules

by John Irving

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Told in an omniscient style, The Cider House Rules is a Dickensian novel about the disenfranchised; it is unusual for Irving in that he does not make use of his “props”—Vienna, bears, and motorcycles. It is also an examination of the family from an entirely different perspective—an orphanage—and the abortion discussions in the book are another example of the violence inherent in the world as Irving sees it. It is a novel with a frankly social point of view, a “polemic,” as some critics claim, yet Irving’s actual stand on the issue of abortion rights is not clear at the end of the book. Dr. Larch, assigned to an orphanage in the small town of St. Cloud’s, tries to prevent the pain and dangers of illegal abortions by performing them himself to “save the mothers.” Many of the abortions are the result of incest, of girls being raped by their fathers or brothers. Dr. Larch is both obstetrician and abortionist; his protégé, Homer Wells, eventually takes a different view of abortion rights, and the novel’s dynamics emerge from the contradiction.

The graphic descriptions of abortion and birth, together with fetuses and physical after-effects of the two processes, make this book a difficult one to read without some guidance. It is not so much a polemic in favor of a certain procedure as it is a frank, if fictive, discussion of the subtle consequences of both sides of the abortion rights controversy—a graphic description of the less than ideal life of the orphan and the ruin of the mothers (especially those suffering from incest), compared with the very real deaths of the fetuses. By contrasting Dr. Larch with Homer and showing both as sympathetic characters, Irving manages to create a dynamic about the controversy. Especially compelling is the series of scenes in which Dr. Larch chooses to offer antiseptic, safe abortions as a defense against those obtained in the abortion dens that cause more suffering than they alleviate.

One of the orphans, Homer, starts to learn the doctor’s trade. Homer’s gradual education about the ways of orphanages and about birth and death leads to a kind of apprenticeship with Dr. Larch, one which eventually will result in a false doctorate for Homer so that he can succeed Dr. Larch, who dies accidentally while inhaling ether—a habit he formed when trying to relieve his own gonorrhea.

Homer was born and raised in the orphanage and, through a series of “aborted” adoptions, has grown to be a part of the orphanage—to be “of some use.” The story moves toward and away from a reconciliation of the basic premise—saving mothers or saving fetuses—and Homer himself is an example of a “saved” baby. It is a difficult and complex argument that brings Irving toward this fictional reconciliation and which gives this novel the sense of a polemic in a way that no other of his novels achieves.

At the center of Homer’s argument against abortion rights is the idea that everything should be wanted, that a child not wanted is a contradiction in terms. Into maturity, he finds a couple to live with in a sunny part of Maine, conceives a child called Angel, and eventually returns to St. Cloud’s under the fictitious name of Dr. Stone to continue the work of Dr. Larch. The sunny seaside where Homer goes with a young couple is the antithesis of the St. Cloud’s atmosphere in which he was raised, and the “cloud” of his belonging to the orphanage is temporarily raised. When he and his lover, Candy, go back to the orphanage to have the baby Angel,...

(This entire section contains 1366 words.)

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he has returned in yet another capacity to the place of his own birth. He subconsciously wonders if he is in fact “wanted” on this earth, a perennial fear of most orphans and of those abandoned intentionally by their parents.

Clearly discussing the problem of the morality of abortion, Irving is at the same time examining kinds of freedom. The orphans, while not exactly prisoners or animals in a zoo, are locked into their situation (the fact of their orphanhood). Homer has even made a “home” of his parentlessness after several parents have tried to make him their child (the last couple who try to adopt him are drowned in a log jam, another bizarre death).

In the act of writing a false history of the orphanage, Dr. Larch is in a sense the fictive novelist once again, this time writing to preserve and defend his point of view. He actually invents a fictional character, a doctor (given the name Stone) with an anti-abortion rights point of view, and elaborately underwrites his credentials, in order for Homer to be able to return to the orphanage and assume the fictive persona.

The character of Melony (misnamed from “Melody” at birth), young Homer’s first lover, is another example of the strong, domineering, searching female in Irving’s novels. She spends much of the novel’s time searching for Homer, to remind him of his broken promise never to leave her. He first meets Melony when he begins reading Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) to the girls’ side of the orphanage—Melony is the oldest and most sexually developed of the girls. The theme of incest in Irving’s novels is more than a prurient aberration; it represents the combination of the two major love drives, that of the opposite sex and that of the family. By combining the two, Irving is saying that true love must somehow combine the two, not separate them.

This novel is much more linear than Irving’s previous novels and is told by an omniscient narrator. When the scene of the novel moves away from the orphanage, the reader is slightly uncomfortable, just as Homer is in the sunny seaside world that is the antithesis of St. Cloud’s. One knows that he will return eventually to take Dr. Larch’s place and sees this temporary adoption (although he is now an adult) as a sidetrack for Homer, who “belongs to the orphanage.”

The central and often-repeated phrase, “to be of some use,” is, in fact, the statement of purpose for all novelists of Irving’s predilections. This “polemic” has a use if it enlightens the reader about the complexity of the problems of abortion versus orphanage, unwed motherhood, and incestuous unions and if it shows that the mother needs to be “saved” as well as the child. While it is true that the child who is “stopped” (in Dr. Larch’s euphemism) leaves behind its fetus for Homer to discover, it is also true that the damage to the mothers of those children is less visible, except in the offices of the illegal abortionists, who extract for payment a promise to prostitute for them in the future. This cycle of depravity and uncleanness must be stopped, in Dr. Larch’s view, and his way, the “Lord’s Way,” is to make the process hygienic and guilt-free, at least to the best of his ability.

That Irving writes an equally strong character, Homer, to offer counterarguments shows that Irving sees the issue as immensely complex. He has focused on one single bizarre and unexplainable aspect of real life and shown how the novelist can “fix” it or can at least describe it in a way so that the reader can decide which view is right. The reader is first introduced to Dr. Larch’s point of view in some convincing scenes, first showing the terror of the illegal abortion room, then showing the positive results of his intervention. Later, as Homer grows up, the novelist shows the other side of the argument in equally convincing scenes, such as the discovery of the aborted fetus. Irving himself thereby takes the novelist’s view, which is to describe and to locate the centers of each argument within the rhetoric of fiction.

John Irving received an Academy Award for adapting his novel for the screen in 2000. The movie was nominated for Best Picture and Michael Caine received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Dr. Larch.

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