The Rules
Only saw the film w/o reading the novel. Did Homer make up the Rules he read aloud? Were those Rules at all, or something else?
shareIn the novel, yes, but not in the movie. Someone else made the rules in the movie.
share
MovieChat Forums > The Cider House Rules (2000) Discussion > The Rules
In the film someone else made the rules. i don't think there's anyway that a year after the first time he'd tried to read the rules to them that he would remember exactly what he said but as you see he starts off with the same rule. take care
shareIn the book Olive made up the rules and Homer never read them out to the pickers. He just stuck them up every year.
shareI have a point to make about the rules: When they read the rules and they're objecting saying how they have no say in making regulations because they don't live or work at the ciderhouse, I thought this could be tied into how society can't have rules about abortion because they aren't in the situation.
shareInteresting point, Tampam.
share[deleted]
i took the rules more general than specifically towards abortion.
i was raised mormon, and as i grew up the more it seemed wrong "for me". but i had grown up being taught by my parents that mormon was IT. that if i wasn't mormon i would very possibly go to hell. i felt if i took a sip of alcohol, if i said a bad word, i was soo bad. a number of other things that would take too long to mention.
well it was a struggle, learning to think for myself and decide what "I" thought. to make up my own opinions and beliefs about life. it is still hard at times, i can often feel my parents teachings tugging at me. but i just don't believe what they believe, it is a comlicated emotion. i think that in life, you need to decide for yourself, make your own rules. nothing is black and white and every one makes "mistakes". mistakes don't make us "bad people" either.
however, it is silly to think that we can live with absolutely NO rules. you need to find a balance, and you need to have a degree of unnderstanding.
The people living in the cider house aren't necessarily right in their point about not following the rules because outsiders wrote them. It's the same thing with abortion. I'm not saying that it's right to approach a situation as the people involved to make laws, I'm saying that the movie makes this point to possibly show that people change their opinions and values after they are in the situation.
sharePrecisely...the whole point about the rules vis a vis abortion was that people who don't "live here" made up dem rules...people not left to do the work, people not left to clean up the mess...in other words...the wealthy folks that can afford to pay for discretion and a physician have always had safe abortions available to them, while the masses for whom they legislate, do not. Leastwise dat's what I see bout dem rules...and be feelin' it was a pretty 'fective plot device fo makin' dat point.
shareImagine coming into a place where there are rules that don't seem to make sense or to apply to your situation. You have people making different things out of the rules or trying to enforce them.
Imagine...
Or just wake up and look around.
The Cider House Rules = The Ten Commandments... and every other code of morality that one person tries to force on another when they don't really live in the cider house they're hanging the rules in.
Did ya notice they spent a lot more time on the roof AFTER they heard the rules about not being allowed up there!!
Those guys are my heros...
"Go back to your oar, Forty One."
The whole movie is about rules. This is why an apparently minor issue is the title. Everyone is breaking rules with often unfortunate consequences.
1. Obviously, not smoking in bed is a good rule. But it is strongly rejected.
2. The rules about the roof were probably made by the owner of the building who was concerned about the roof breaking if too many people were on it for to long. He took great pains to grant moderate use of it. But this was a kindness which they totally missed.
3. Not aborting is a rule which Dr Larch was continually breaking. Homer objected to this, but recognized that there were extreme occasions where abortion was appropriate. Before abortion became legal and commonplace, the laws recognized similar exceptions.
4. I doubt that Dr Larch was taught to put himself to sleep with ether in medical school. He broke this rule with very unfortunate consequences.
5. When a worker threw a cigarette butt in the cider vat, he was going to kill Mr Rose rather than obey that rule.
6. Toward the end, Mr Rose broke a primal rule with very severe consequences delivered by his daughter.
7. Olive understandably broke a rule sleeping with Homer, but corrected it when she returned to her husband.
8. Many other rules were broken with usually unfortunate consequences.
9. Putting the children to sleep with love was a rule that was regularly followed with beautiful consequences.
Without following rules about pronunciation, we would not be able to speak. In writing this, I am following rules about speling rite now. Laws are (hopefully) made by leaders after careful consideration of all aspects, which individuals are not in a position to do.
Desperate, her name is Candy not Olive. Olive is Wally's mother. And Wally is Candy's boyfriend. They weren't married, hence the reason for the abortion. If you remember, in the beginning they both gave different last names when Candy went to have the abortion.
This is my signature and I'm sticking to it. lol
It's interesting that you saw the breaking of the rules as often a bad thing in the film. I saw it more as an indictment against the rulemakers - because the rules were written by people who were so ignorant of the reality of those who had to abide by them that they were rendered pointless. Life isn't as simple as whether or not you eat your lunch on the roof, smoke in bed, or have an abortion. Absolute pronouncements make little sense, because life is more complex than that. Some rules are too inflexible to enforce. Others are so inapplicable that they are simply baffling.
In both the novel and the film, the message is that rules are nothing more than a piece of paper nobody can read, tacked on a post standing in an often empty room. The point was that Candy didn't live in the cider house, and she had no idea of the lives of those who did. The rules she tried to write for them were laughable and overly simplistic. She thought she was writing rules in their best interest, to keep them safe, but the dangers of their lives were far more insidious than anything that could be touched by those rules.
Extrapolate as you will.
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