The Cider House Rules

with its multiplicity of characters, its narrative mass, its overt sense of sentimentality, and its generic interactions with such modes as the detective story -- as the forum for constructing the fictions that intentionally challenge his readers' value systems (David and Womack, p.

One of the central themes in this massive story centers on abortion -- its practice, its necessity, its justification, and its value underpinnings. This brief report will examine Irving's presentation of the "abortion debate" with respect to three characters in the novel, Dr. or St. Larch, Homer Wells, and Mrs. Eames. It will be argued that Irving positions two opposing views of abortion as held by Larch and Wells to identify the themes of the controversy over this medical practice, leaving the reader to decide which "side" as presented by these two physicians is most appropriate.

Dr. Larch, later known as St. Larch, embarks on a career of abortion after encountering a prostitute (Mrs. Eames) which whom he had his own first sexual encounter. Mrs. Eames re-enters Larch's world when he is serving as a resident at the South End Branch of the Boston Lying-In Hospital. Mrs. Eames has taken an aborticide that has left her internal organs in a fragile and tenuous state. Six days after entering into Larch's care, she dies. Larch learn

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r in a position in which prostituting themselves is a necessity. As Irving (p. 49) wrote of Mrs. Eames, "she was a widow who lived a proper life in Boston, but that in order to afford such a life she found it necessary to sell herself in some out-of-the-way town." It is this kind of woman, confronted with the alternative of starvation or prostitution, who may find that an abortion is necessary. If Larch is representative of what we can consider the "pro choice" position on abortion, he has also become "in the view of the erring, the sanctuary to which to flee" (Irving, p. 69). Homer Wells, on the other hand is an orphan who grows to maturity at St. Cloud, the orphanage and hospital at which Larch himself works. According to Davis and Womack (p. 305), Homer is "the eternal orphan who becomes a surrogate son for Larch, as well as his professional successor." Unlike Larch, Wells will reject the belief and practice of abortion. A seminal experience in Homer's life occurs when he spends a night with a pregnant woman, resting his hand on the moving baby in her womb and hearing her say "you shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel it kick, or listen to it move" (Irving, p. 87). Because he has spent a night
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1496
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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