ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the representations of medical practitioners in fiction, encompassing classic and contemporary literature. John Irving, born John Wallace Blunt Jr. in 1942, is a best-selling American novelist and an Academy Award-winning screenwriter. The Cider House Rules is a capacious novel set in northern Maine. It was made into a movie in 1999 starring Michael Caine as Dr. Larch. The main theme is abortion, and the two central characters are Dr. Wilbur Larch and his assistant, the orphan Homer Wells. Dr. Larch was born in Portland, Maine, and attended Bowdoin College and Harvard Medical School. He believed that abortions spared the misery of growing up as an unwanted child. Dr. Larch metamorphoses Homer into a physician who will be able to succeed him at St. Cloud's with a two-pronged approach. The appropriate documents, including a medical diploma, are in Dr. Larch's possession.
