DESCRIPTION (supplied by the customer): The Doctor offers 2 incongruous services ... how can these services coexist? Answer the following questions: What is the moral dilemma posed in the story? A Birth occurs in the story ... how does this affect the main character's view? What happens to change the main characters view? What are the Cider House Rules and what are they a metaphor for? Who broke the Cider House Rules? What is the moral of the story? What does it mean to be the hero of your own life? What other issues arise in this story that are relevant to the reproductive and overall health?
PROJECT DEVELOPED:
The Cider House, an orphanage hospital at St. Cloud's, is one of the two poles or hemispheres the entire plot builds upon. The story poses quite a bit of a challenge to the unsophisticated onlooker's mindset trained primarily to distinguish between, and judge, the clear black and the clear white. Dr. Larch, one of the central protagonists, is a far more complex profile. It's not so much about his personality or character as it is about his moral stance. As a licensed physician, he assists at childbirth. The outside world formally knows him as helping a new life happen. The other side of the man is his second practice amounting to exactly the opposite: abortions, or life taking. He takes life away from infant and totally helpless human beings having little say in their parents decision not to grant them life. It might just be uncomfortable and awkward for these young mothers, pressed by their ambitious husbands, to grant life at this particular point. They are not prepared nor willing to pay that price for their right to have a fulfilling sexual life outside the bonds of marriage. However, the story is less moralizing than that. The author does not seem disposed to judge the heroes very strictly, because another part of the story is that these are for the most part inexperienced young men and