Word: homering
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...Larch says this to Homer Wells, a young man born at the orphanage whose various sojourns with foster families have all ended in failure. Since Homer seems destined to stay in St. Cloud's, Larch urges him to "be of use," and the lad complies. He begins by taking over the nightly readings to the younger children; those in the boys' wing hear David Copperfield or Great Expectations, and the girls get Jane Eyre. The idea of featuring great novels about orphans is Dr. Larch's: "What in hell else would you read to an orphan?" Homer's duties gradually...
Ultimately, Homer rebels against his teacher: "You can call it a fetus, or an embryo, or the products of conception, thought Homer Wells, but whatever you call it, it's alive." He announces that he wants nothing more to do with abortions...
...rest of the novel is an intricate elaboration designed to show Homer the error of this decision. Irving gives the orphan an escape from St. Cloud's in the persons of Wally Worthington and Candy Kendall, a glittering couple who come to St. Cloud's for a familiar reason. Wally will someday inherit Ocean View Orchards, a thriving apple farm just off the Maine seacoast, and Candy will someday marry him, once Dr. Larch terminates the symptom of their careless passion...
When they leave, Homer goes with them, an unofficial adoptee of the Worthington family. Growing apples strikes Homer as better than the business of St. Cloud's: "What he loved about the life at Ocean View was how everything was of use and that everything was wanted." This Edenic state does not last for long. Wally, still a bachelor, goes off to fly a B-24 in World War II and is reported missing over Burma. Homer and Candy have come to love each other, as well as Wally. The result of their mutual grief and consolation is predictable...
...display. Yet the restrictions imposed by these skills are also evident. In the world according to Irving, characters are the passive victims of life. They are either children or childlike, dependent on forces beyond their control. They "wait and see" (an ongoing refrain in this novel), wondering, like Homer and Dr. Larch, "What is going to happen to me?" What literally happens to them, of course, is the tricks, sometimes macabre, visited upon them by their creator...