In The Cider House Rules, Homer, the protagonist, after having stifled all the uncomfortable situations in his life “stayed awake [at night] because the ghosts of those days had not disappeared” (312). While Homer liked to think he was in control of his life, particularly his emotions, the quote exemplifies a theme common to characters in John Irving's novels: escapism and the repression of feelings. In many of his novels, characters face messy circumstances that cause distress. Rather than address these issues, characters tend to evade situations. Homer, despite his beliefs, is haunted at night because he cannot come to terms with his emotions during the day. In A Prayer for Owen Meany, Johnny, unable to cope with life at home after the death of his best friend, runs away to Canada; similarly, in The Cider House Rules, Homer moves driven by unresolved and conflicting feelings towards his orphanage. The Man with the Water Method and The World According to Garp involve characters who, fearful of their relationships, ruin bonds with others. These situations are contrasted with the organic images through symbolism, perceived by the characters, and the nature and actions of the characters and their environment. The negative consequences that accompany the characters as they avoid discomfort, described with organic images, reveal how evasion from confrontation is intrinsically unnatural. Therefore, Irving suggests that repression is a temporary solution; escapism is unnatural and consequently harmful to one's well-being. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay. Irving presents the reader with deeply unstable characters, who tend to focus on their relationship with the world around them. For these characters, primarily the protagonists of each novel, the circumstances of their lives dictate their behavior and reactions. These characters strain their relationships - those with people, their internal struggles, and their environment, all developed through organic imagery and symbolism - as they attempt to distance themselves emotionally, to evade uncomfortable feelings and situations. The animalistic images, symbolizing the character's romantic partners, reveal the character's most intimate and repressed feelings about their partners towards themselves. In The Water-Method Man, Trumper's fascination with his pufferfish symbolizes his relationship with his ex-wife, Biggie. The puffer fish “annoyed him […] whose gross practice was to smear his translucent lips against the aquarium wall […] The other fish were terrified of him. Trumper wanted to prick him with a pin at the peak of his bloated state.” (172). Trumper's bitterness towards the pufferfish mirrors the bitterness he possesses towards Biggie. The use of negative words, such as "disgusting" and "annoyed", conveys the rudimentary aspects of Trumper's unfavorable attitude towards Biggie: he sees her as an irritating person. However, Trump's perception of the pufferfish goes beyond just Biggie's negative image; reveals how the relationship affects Trumper. Biggie “terrifie[s]” Trumper, as the blowfish does to his peers, and causes him to want to incite violence and “sting” the blowfish. By repressing how he truly feels about Biggie, Trumper is damaging his own well-being and happiness. Irving exemplifies Trumper's negative attitude towards Biggie when he sees Biggie as a beast, who with "his strength [...] had overpowered him and left him speechless as if he werean animal, ugly, scary, and capable of eating. "[him] whole" (52). The simile comparing Biggie to an animal not only dehumanizes her, but the animalistic imagery used to describe her suggests that not only is she an animal, but a monster. Monsters by nature are scary, unnatural, and unwanted; by comparing Biggie to one, Bogus reveals his previously repressed feelings towards him. At one point Bogus admired Biggie's strength, but as the relationship fades, his optimal perception of her is also fading. Irving compares Trumper's attitude towards Biggie to his attitude towards Tulpen, while Trumper observes his other pets. He “worried about the turtles and the fish the same way he once worried about the mouse. That mouse lived in constant danger; it was [his] responsibility to keep him out of Biggie's trap" (38). his feelings towards Tulpen and Biggie. Although for different reasons, in both situations Trumper is inclined to keep the animals alive. He attempts to save the mouse, not in accordance with Biggie, but in spite of her. Alternatively, Trumper tries to protect the mouse, Tulpen, in an attempt to save their doomed relationship. At one point, he cared about Biggie, but realizes that the relationship is not viable; alternatively, despite the "danger", Trumper has the opportunity to save his relationship with Tulpen. Trumper's attempt to reconcile and save his relationship with Tulpen shows his progress in dealing with uncomfortable situations; instead of denying the bad relationship with his girlfriend and consequently hating her, he wants to repair the damage in the relationship, leaving positive outcomes in the future for both of them. Family relationships in Irving's novels contrast artificiality with internal struggles to establish characters. perceptions of themselves, suggesting their inability to connect and succeed in life. In A Prayer for Owen Meany, Johnny's stump (received after having his finger amputated to escape the draft) shocked him. In an anguished tone, he reflected on why he felt incomplete; the amputation “was the cleanest cut imaginable. There is nothing grotesque, or ruined, or even just rough-looking, about the stump. The only thing wrong with [him] is what's missing. Owen Meany is missing” (540). The images depicting the artificiality of Johnny's wound suggest that his sacrifice was unnatural. He sacrificed the appendix to escape a war, a physical reminder of the damage escape can cause but, more importantly, the story behind the stump haunts him. Johnny's late best friend and brother, Owen, amputated Johnny's finger. Unable to cope with the loss of his friend, Johnny abandons his life at home. He holds on to certain aspects of Owen, while repressing the rest; meanwhile the stump constantly reminds Johnny of who he misses. The lack of acceptance of Owen's death causes Johnny to feel disconnected from the world around him, therefore incomplete. Denny J. Weaver states that, "Johnny's faith in God stems from his belief that Owen was called by God, but there is no other continuing impact of Owen beyond his death saving the Vietnamese orphans" (620) . However, Owen's resurrection, a moment in which Johnny believed Owen had saved him from falling down the stairs, actually had a profound impact on his belief that Owen was a divine figure. Johnny's inability to give up his memory of Owen, and his refusal to return to the United States from Canada where he is escaping Owen's death, shows how their relationship controls his identity. Similarly, Philip Page refers tothis when he states that "the account [of Owen's death] reflects John's exaggerated sentimentality for Owen and his clearly distorted claims about Owen's divinity and the foreknowledge of events" (144). Johnny's perception of Owen as a god-like figure, while repressing Owen's other memories, perpetuates the way Johnny sees Owen in a broader light. In A Water-Method Man, Trumper, aspiring to connect with his son “would choose this very one to make the bay roll and swell, inspire a cacophony of howls circling overhead, lift the Great White Whale from the depths and make him leap.” like a giant trout […] then they look at the whole turn and take off, leaving them with the memory” (246). The images of the ocean, the exaggerated movements, the swellings of the bay and the leaps of the whales, accentuate the mythical aspect of Trumper's fantasy, not of Moby Dick, the "Great White Whale", but of his desire to maintain a relationship with his son, Colm. The intensity of Trumper's imagination, the way he wishes to "inspire" the Ull and "raise the Great White Whale," conveys his passion to connect with his son. However, Moby Dick is only an unreal fantasy, which suggests that Bogus's attempt to remain close to Colm, after abandoning him for so long, is that too, a fantasy. In The Cider House Rules, Homer sees himself as a lynx sliding down a hillside that "came closer to the orphanage than he would ever choose to come, its ferocious stench of death clashing with the freezing cold. […] He spat his anger at Homer Wells, as if Homer had caused his inadvertent descent” (401). The sensory imagery, which describes the orphanage as a place that smells of death, amplifies Homer's dissatisfaction with his living arrangement. The personification of the lynx, who spits “anger” at Homer as if he had caused the lynx to fight, mirrors Homer's feelings towards Larch. Homer rarely expresses his feelings to Larch; he hides them and this takes a toll on his emotional health as he now sees this unhealthy relationship everywhere, even in a lynx. Debra Shostak notes, “That is, [the characters] never live in a normalized, acknowledged paternal relationship with [their children]. Irving suggests one of two things: either the impossibility of fathers living in right relationship with their children, or the impossibility of himself imagining such fathers” (134). Homer's relationship with Dr. Larch never takes true father-son form; rather eliminate those feelings from the relationship to avoid becoming too detached. Likewise, this is reflected in Homer's adult life; only when Homer leaves the orphanage does Larch begin to show paternal affection. This repressive attitude affects Homer's relationship with his son. The pattern of repressing feelings and carrying on father-son relationships only at a distance suggests that in the novel fathers and sons cannot coexist, or at least carry on normal relationships, damaging the mental state of each character. Finally, Todd Davis Kenneth Womack notes, “Homer can't believe what Latch preaches about abortion. At the same time, because of his relationship with Larch, he cannot even condemn the actions of his “father”” (395). While Homer represses his negative feelings towards Larch, forcing him to abandon his home, once Homer addresses his long-distance relationship with Larch, he begins to relate to Larch. The initial stages of this resolution show the repair of a relationship once damaged by hidden feelings and animosity. The contrasting inorganic and organic images of fear of death and acceptance of it reveal how to accept the cyclenature of life is emotionally beneficial to the individual, rather than evading it. the reality of death. In The World According to Garp, before his son's death “Garp appreciated having such a close examination of the child; he lay down next to Walt and smelled the boy's fresh breath, remembering when Duncan's breath had turned sour in his sleep like that as an adult. It had been an unpleasant feeling for Garp, shortly after Duncan turned six, to smell Duncan's breath stale and slightly nauseating in his sleep. It was as if the process of decay, of slow death, had already begun in him” (310). The paradox in the passage, between Duncan's youth and dying breath, suggests Garp's inherent fearful nature and fear of death. Garp is hyperaware of Duncan's youth, evidently distant from the possibility of dying, yet his pessimism makes him see only Walt's future death. “Decay” and embitterment imply that the process of death is natural; fruits and organic substances rot and die. Garp's fear of dying later is a major factor in his repression of feelings, especially after Walt's death when, “Between Helen and Garp, Under Toad became [a] code phrase for anxiety. […] Garp and Helen evoked the beast as a way of referring to their own sense of danger," he recalls when "Duncan asked on the plane, 'How did Walt ask him if [The Under Toad] was green or brown?' Both Garp and Duncan laughed, but it wasn't green or brown […] It was [himself]. It was Elena. It was the color of bad weather, it was the size of a car” (Garp 473). Garp's fear of death takes shape as Under Toad, which represents Garp's missing son Walt and suggests the weight that death can carry for long periods. Because of his disappearance, Garp will always be haunted by death, as suggested by the anaphora of “when the”. Likewise, through the anaphora of “was,” death haunts Garp because he feels guilty about it. In this case, he feels that the death was not natural or right, he caused it. Because of these feelings, she puts a strain on her relationships with her family by evading situations that she believes are deadly, while at the same time trying to repress her feelings towards Walt. Garp observed death and believed that “'we must not wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a dramatic taste'” (509). The personification of Death is unnatural, because Death simply is not a person and cannot feel as Garp suggests. The fear of death and the association with it as an unnatural event suggests, due to the unfortunate circumstances surrounding death and Garp, that it is better to accept death as part of the cycle of life, rather than actively avoid it. In A Prayer for Owen Meany, after Johnny's mother Tabitha died, they planned a funeral and “All those same old women from [Johnny's] grandmother were there. [He] knows what they came to see. How do the royals react to all this? How will Harriet Wheelwright respond to Fate with a capital F, a freak accident (also with a capital F), or an act of God (if that's what you think it was)? All those same old women, black and humped as crows gathered around a roadkill, came to the service as if to say, We acknowledge, O God, that Tabby Wheelwright was not allowed to get away with it” (214). The old women are the symbol of Johnny's society. The stratification and rigid social norms challenge Gravesend, which Tabby had challenged by having Johnny out of the marriage. The old women's simile is censorious and suggests that society is collecting the remains of someone "killed on the road", an innocent person. The arrival of the "hags" after his death reveals how, even if they evaded theconfrontation with Tabby about her situation while she was alive, life has a natural cycle, and the hags come to deal with death on the road now that she's dead. At the end of the novel, when Owen died, "The fabric that hung from the stumps of [his] arms was thin and delicate as a spider's web, thin and intricate as old lace" (Prayer 625). The simile associating Owen's life-threatening war wounds with delicate lace evokes a feeling of peace. In Owen's final moments, Irving romanticizes his bloody and violent amputation. The image associated with spider web and lace implies fragility, meaning that Owen would need to be looked after. Death here is equally beautiful thanks to the imagery, in contrast to the frightening associations of death present in Irving's other works. Acceptance of death, Irving may suggest, is natural and will likely lead to resolution rather than fear. and individual progress. In The World According to Garp, Jenny, a self-proclaimed feminist, went to college where "Wellesley's recommendation had come from her older brothers, who had assured her parents that Wellesley women were not looked upon vaguely and were regarded highly marriage potential. Jenny felt […] as if she were really a cow, only prepared for the insertion of the artificial insemination device” (2). Yes dehumanizes Jenny and other women, enchanting them into the desires of men and authority figures. The condemnation of sex, calling into question women who have freedom, creates an unbalanced power dynamic in which women are treated as second-hand citizens, lacking the ability. of making global decisions. Irving compares the repression of his desires to “artificial insemination,” literally unnatural, perhaps suggesting that treating women as less than men is also unnatural. In The Cider House Rules, Dr. Larch, an abortion doctor who condemns the pro-life society, observes: “Is it a democratic society that condemns people to the accident of conception? What are we monkeys? […] What are you thinking? You're not just crazy! You are ogres!" (376). The animalistic imagery comparing society to "apes" and "ogres" reveals Irving's accusatory tone towards the way society views abortion. Alluding to society as apes and ogres, creatures that carry negative connotations, Irving condemns traditional caste and pro-life society, changing the power dynamic by vilifying society rather than women they cut out their tongues in solidarity with a young rape victim. The line goes as follows: “He conceived of his narrator heroine as a lesbian who doesn't realize that until she cuts out her tongue she has made a difference. herself undesirable as a lover […] There have, indeed, been suicides. “There are always suicides,” writes Garp, “among people who are unable to say what they think”” (661). language, a reason that appears in several other Irving novels, suggests a lack of autonomy in life. The direct link between sex and lack of control harms individuals as their desires are minimized for mainstream society. In The Cider House Rules, Larch believes: “These same people who tell us that we must defend the lives of the unborn, are the same people who don't seem so interested in defending anyone but themselves after the birth incident is complete ! These same people who profess their love for the soul of the unborn child do not care about making a great contribution to the poor, they do not care about offering muchassistance to the unwanted or oppressed! How do they justify such concern for the fetus and such a lack of concern for unwanted and abused children? They condemn others for the accident of conception” (Cider 377). The anaphora in the passage highlights Irving's critical tone towards people who condemn abortion. The passage contains opinions from people who condemn abortion versus critical opposition. Irving ironically suggests through juxtaposition and accusatory repetition that people who demonize abortion, blaming it on a lack of responsibility, take no responsibility at all. While they may be quick to judge those who left without a choice, they deliberately make the choice to take away their freedom of choice. Helena Wahlstrom, a critic of Irving, states: “the novel […] makes abortion almost universal, a part of normative reproductive practices. This portrayal is true to the reality of abortion in the United States – where studies show that all types of women have abortions” (258). The book begins with back-alley abortions and includes older women, young teenagers, and both rich and poor women seeking abortions, representative of the reality in America. Although abortion may be seen as the most escapist situation (since women are supposed to give up their children, thus escaping their problems), it is actually the truest form of confrontation in the novel. Instead of running away from their problems, regaining control over their sexuality, no longer repressing it, women take responsibility and make decisive choices that will lead to a solution. Characters in John Irving's novels tend to physically distance themselves from their problems in order to gain short-term satisfaction, without considering the long-term effects. By abandoning their problems, they create poor situations for themselves, which Irving suggests is unnatural. Irving uses animal symbolism to establish how the characters perceive themselves, in terms of identification and society, revealing how self-perception influences how the characters see the world. In The Cider House Rules, a confused Homer sees a lynx, "panicked", trying to run up a hill; “it was less than halfway when it began to slide down again, […] the lynx was panting; it ran diagonally uphill, slipping but catching itself, and slipping again, finally escaping into the softer snow of the forest […] the lynx would have accepted any escape route from the dark hospital.” (401). The lynx symbolizes Homer and the struggle he faces growing up in a hostile environment. The repetition of the word “slip” emphasizes Homer's repressed feelings about the hospital. Even though it is his home, it is no longer the safe haven he would try to return to, inhospitable to the person he has become. While in The Cider House Rules, Homer perceived himself similarly to a lynx, in The Water Method Man, Trumper identifies with an eel: “He saw a small turquoise eel, translucent, its internal organs visible and in some functioning way. […] As the bubble rose to the surface, other fish examined it, bumped it, sometimes broke it. […] Was a bubble a word or an entire sentence? Maybe a paragraph! A little, translucent turquoise poet who reads beautifully in his own world!” (58). The aquatic imagery and personification describing the eel represents Trumper's feelings towards himself. The images, which describe the eels as “tiny, translucent,” with visible and simultaneously functioning organs, probed by his peers, suggest a fragility in Trumper and a delicacy in his emotional state. Although Trumper is not formally an artist, the inquisition towards what the bubble, hiswords, reveal his belief that both he and his art are misunderstood. Later Trumper “stabbed and stabbed, trying to throw one of the [fish] against the glass. They had killed the poet! The eel had begged them: they were asking for mercy! And they ate it, those assholes” (Acqua 61). While the previous eel comparison described Trumper's feelings towards himself, this one reveals how he perceives himself among his peers in society. Trumper believes he is a victim of his peers. The violent language, “killed” and “eaten,” suggests that his peers are consuming his worth. Furthermore, the quote reveals Trumper's violent tendencies and penchant for revenge. He violently “stabbed and stabbed” the aquarium trying to eliminate one of the fish, a behavior that may have resulted from having repressed his feelings towards others. His justification is short: “they had killed the poet”. It victimizes the poet and demonizes the Eel's peers, showing how Trumper feels he is being abused within his own society. Irving personifies the denial of reality to underline that repressing one's problems is harmful to oneself, because it persecutes the individual, hindering him. make them grow. In The Cider House Rules, Senior Worthington believed that his "brain [was] sending poison to [his] heart" (232). The personification of the brain and the heart as two separate entities with different emotional and logical purposes emphasizes the distinction between choosing and imposing something. The choice of the word "poison" suggests that the burden of drinking for so many years took its toll on Senior Worthington and that his repression and avoidance of situations, disguised as a state of drunkenness, led to his sad end. The distinction and personification between brain and heart suggests that the brain is responsible for logical thinking while Worthington's true feelings come from his heart; separating the brain from the heart; Irving thus separates feelings from rational ones, making it easier for people to repress their feelings. Repression therefore leads to restlessness, as Garps would say awake [at night] because the ghosts of those days had not disappeared” (Garp 312). Condoms by nature are supposed to protect and act as a shield against sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. Here the condom symbolizes the shield that Homer has erected against his past, however, as the situation demonstrates, condoms can break, so Homer's shield is penetrable. Repressing and evading the past can only work for a certain time; the situation will always have the ability to haunt him. Irving also uses escapism in his writing to add "the suspense he creates when he refuses to immediately recount the incident." While we learn of Garp, Helen, and Duncan's injuries soon after the car crash, we do not learn that Walt is dead until the end of the chapter (McKay par. 7). The ambiguity after Walt's death is prevalent. The structure of the narrative and its language adapt to Garp's personal voice, translating the information regarding the incident in a poetic manner. The abstract atmosphere surrounding the situation adds suspense, making Garp seem regretful. Regret takes its toll on many of Irving's characters, looming over them and affecting their perception of everyday life. In The Cider House Rules, Angel sat on the roof with Rose and “told her all about the ocean: the strange tiredness you feel at the seashore, the weight in the air, the mist in the middle of a summer day , the way the surf softens sharp things” (511). The images of the ocean symbolize the repressed situations that Rose and Angel are dealing with. With words like "weight" and.