Fate and Free Will in The Cider House Rules: Novel to Hollywood

As a writer, John Irving exhibits conflicting, coexisting impulses toward the goodhearted and grim facts of life in all his work.1 He creates wonderful communities of extremely good, lovable people. Yet, as the last line in The World According to Garp expresses, "we are all terminal cases."2 In Irving's fiction, everyone-no matter whom-is destined for a certain path. InA Prayer for Owen Meany, Owen explains this by example: "I don't want to be a hero . . . it's that I am a hero. I know that's what I'm supposed to be."3

In The Cider House Rules, Irving's sentimentality and startling brutality align themselves with implications of free will and determinism. Homer Wells's journey concludes with resigned acceptance of the truth that he is fated to perform abortions-even though he has refused his whole life-and to ultimately succeed Dr. Wilbur Larch as "doctor" and head of St. Cloud's orphanage, another calling he does his best to avoid. Cider House displays a world of determinism inherent in the life of the crucial character, and as an overriding dynamic of the fictional universe. The Hollywood film, conversely, exaggerates Irving's sentimental and optimistic vision of human nature while minimizing his darker tendencies, especially that of impinging fate. The film provides a strikingly more upbeat portrait of human possibility and free will, suggesting that life offers opportunities for making important, pivotal decisions. Homer searches for answers, hoping to heroically take charge of his own life and affect it for the better. "Whether I shall turn out to be a hero of my own life," he reads repeatedly from David Copperfield, "or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."4 Ultimately, the pages of Cider House show Homer not as a hero, but as one destined by fate; coming to terms with the sense that little of existence is genuinely a matter of individual human control or choice.

In the novel Cider House, Homer is fated to leave the oiphanage over and over, fail in the outside world, and return. Larch acknowledges this in a fitful letter while Homer is away as a young adult: "Just because you're having the time of your life . . . don't you dare forget how to be of use-don't you forget where you belong" (337).

Several families try and ultimately fail to adopt Homer when he is a child. This background is set up in both mediums, but in the novel it contributes to Homer's ultimate fate to return, whereas in the film his failed adoptions are simpler, less disturbing, and aligned with free will. In his novel, Irving devotes a thick chapter titled "The Boy Who Belonged to St. Cloud's" to Homer's trials and rejections by four successive foster families-thus setting up the foundational argument for Homer's belonging to St. Cloud's.

The first adoptive family returns the infant Homer because he never cries-contentment is a quality he has had little choice but to learn in an orphanage. Family number two resides in the neighboring town of Three Mile Falls. They miss having a child making noise around the house and proceed to abuse Homer in order to make him wail. Homer's third familythe seemingly homey, moral Professor Draper and his wife, "Mom" to all-institute unfair and severe punishments, making Homer recite the family's prayer mantra: "I am vile, I abhor myself (19). Homer's fourth and final trial with a potential family consists of a camping trip with the lively Winkles, who end up killing themselves in a logging river-a spectacle Homer observes.

Through Irving's chronology of each of Homer's adoptions and depictions of why each fails, it seems there is some force working against Homer, fating him for rejection. he is misunderstood, abused, or abandoned by every family he attempts to belong to-as if he is fated to find only the wrong kind of families. Homer is left with the impression that there is an inordinate amount of chaos out in the world; these failures and returns make Homer who he is. After the Draper incident, Homer had "never liked himself so much. he felt he was on the track to finding out who he was, and how he could be of use, but he knew that the path led back to St. Cloud's" (20). It is no coincidence that the phrase Homer uses here, "to be of use," is one of Larch's mottoes. On his way home, he explains to a baffled logging truck driver who stops to question him, "I belong to St. Cloud's ... I got lost" (20). Irving ensures that the reader understands his point by stating it for us directly: "Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna-and, finally, Dr. Wilbur Larch-were forced to admit that Homer Wells belonged to St. Cloud's. The determined boy was not put up for adoption any more" (2).

In the film, this adoptive history-and the sense of Homer's real belonging to St. Cloud'sis truncated and simplified. We first hear the friendly voice of Michael Caine as Dr. Larch: "In other parts of the world, young men leave home and travel far and wide in search of a promising future . . . ," implying that this should not be the case in this part of the world. Meanwhile, a young couple climbs the hill in front of the orphanage and enters the happy, bubbly establishment. Larch describes himself as "caretaker of many, father of none," but continues, "in a way there was one!' The viewer is then shown a five-minute chronology of Homer's trials as a foster child, while credits and opening score roll.