Word: homers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anyone else, these pages must show."--Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, as read by Homer Wells...
...Cider House Rules, based on the John Irving novel of the same name, is the story of Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire) trying to be his own hero. Raised in an orphanage in the era leading up to World War II, Homer fashioned his own version of a family. Besides having the other orphans as siblings, Homer develops a strong father-son bond with Dr. Wilbur Larch, played by Oscar-winner Michael Caine...
Larch is more than just the head of the orphanage. He also performs illegal abortions. As Homer gets older, and it becomes more obvious that he will never be adopted, Larch begins to train him not only in obstetric techniques but also abortion methods. Homer, however, has other plans. He's not against abortions; he just doesn't want to perform them himself. Larch can't understand his reluctance, using a woman who died because of an underground abortion by an amateur as an example. "That's what doing nothing gets you," Larch cries. "It means that someone else...
...premise is intriguing: Scarry claims we imagine best when guided word by word, as in great literature. Whatever we imagine without this guidance is dull and unsatisfying compared to the detail and life our imaginings attain under the tutelage of Homer or Flaubert (two of Scarry's favorite examples). She claims that the "ordinary enfeeblement of images has a striking exception in the verbal arts, where images somehow do acquire the vivacity of perceptual objects, and it is the purpose of this book to trace some of the ways this comes about." Literature contains structures and formats that allow...
...world of literary criticism, as long as one can cite examples, one's ideas will have validity. Scarry quotes liberally from some authors (like Homer and Flaubert) and occasionally from other poets or novelists to support her airy-sounding ideas. But the skeptical reader's sensibilities will hesitate to accept these categories, mechanisms, formats, processes or other structures imposed upon the activity of imagination guided by words. Dreaming by the Book is a rather formulaic approach to an extremely free-flowing activity...