- eitel5
A Culture of Objectification
"This is how the world ends, I think, everything crazy yet people doing normal things." -Cedar, FHOTLG
Future Home of the Living God is yet another apocalyptic fiction novel, but this one comes with a new look: Cedar, an adopted Native American girl, becomes pregnant in a time when fertility is hunted. There are so many things I'd like to say about this novel.
I first want to question the element of trust that continuously pops up throughout the novel. Apocalypse tends to throw morals to the ground, and makes one forget everything they stand for. Cedar doesn't seem to have very many conditions that need to be met before she trusts a person. Exhibit A: She trusts Sera and Glen, her adoptive parents, wholeheartedly throughout the novel, up until the point where Sera tells her that Glen is her biological father, and expresses dissent about Cedar having a baby at all. This doesn't break her trust completely and immediately, but this seems like a normal thing, right? After all, if your parent waited until you were twentysomething to tell you that you are adopted / other life altering news, wouldn't your trust be broken a little?
Oh, but just get to the point! Exhibit B: Cedar faces Phil, the father to her baby, with lack of trust at first, and an understandable wish to never see his face again. He then, in the wake of the apocalypse, invades her home and claims he wants to protect her from the baby snatching organization called Mother. She trusts him. She then gets snatched and taken to a hospital to be monitored 24/7 and knows that someone ratted her pregnancy out: she blames him. See where I'm going with this?
I guess it serves itself to say that trust gets a little wobbly during an apocalypse. Some more food for thought: why the men in her life? Phil, Glen, Eddy, even the postman! Each of these people have a uniquely trusting relationship with Cedar.
The difference in sex throughout this novel remains an interesting theme. The pregnant females are the victims, and yet the pregnant/once were pregnant/want to be pregnant women are also the perpetrators of the crime in the novel - Cedar gets turned in and ratted out by women, captured by women, cared for in custody by women. Most of the men play an insignificant role in the novel: Erdrich wanted the postman to be insignificant, so she made him try to pretend Cedar didn't exist. Eddy, Glen, and Phil all tried to help Cedar, with varying levels of success. The theme throughout the novel was women versus women. Does this speak to Erdrich's opinions on misogyny and the glass ceiling?
This apocalypse shows eerie similarity to things like the holocaust, the Japanese internment camps, and other acts of terrorism. A specific member of the population (pregnant women) are captured and treated as property to serve some "greater purpose" that an organization (Mother) has approved as a way of life. Contrary to the holocaust, it's not because anyone who is not a woman or pregnant is a "superior race" - it's just about the objectification of the women.
What do I mean by that word, objectification? It is a word that has almost created a culture around itself. There are reports of objectification in India through arranged marriages, in China through their one-child policy, and - wouldn't you know it - even here in the United States, as seen blatantly through our press and media coverage of female celebrities. Objectification of women leads to violence against them, domestic abuse, and general feelings of superiority over them. This is the glass ceiling that no one wants to or is able to see. Erdrich alludes to this objectification in a big way: by telling the tale of a young girl living in a world where young women are taken captive. Who's to say this won't become the next apocalypse?
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