53 pages • 1 hour read
Future Home of the Living God
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Symbols & Motifs
Cedar’s Diary
Future Home of the Living God is structured as a diary, written by Cedar to introduce her unborn child to a world in flux. She wants to provide her child with documentation of how the world once was and how the child came into being. The diary itself thus symbolizes Cedar’s otherwise largely unexpressed optimism: She envisions herself giving the diary to her child, which presupposes a shared future in which there is enough stability for them to reflect on the past.
The diary is also a symbolic link between the old world and the new. As it is written in the present tense and unfolds in a day-by-day structure, the diary provides a detailed account of a collapsing society. The governmental broadcasts, the emergency votes, the panic buying, and lost electricity are all included as mundane details. Cedar’s humdrum tone as she describes this life-changing event indicates her powerlessness to halt the collapse. The old world becomes the new in the span of a few months, and the cataclysmic transformation is contained within the diary entries. Each entry therefore symbolizes the inevitable decline of the old world and the horrific rise of something more terrible in its place.
The ending of the diary reflects Cedar’s tenacious optimism in an increasingly hopeless circumstance. Held in captivity, her baby taken from her, she persists in her writing. The writing switches to a future conditional tense, expressing a hope that she will one day share her life with her child. This significant shift in tone and tense indicates that Cedar’s optimism has diminished—but not vanished. The diary symbolizes her endurance and gives her life purpose in her darkest hour.
Hospitals
In the novel, hospitals are central symbols because of their versatile signification.
Cedar’s first hospital appointment is a perfunctory routine of pregnancy that she takes for granted. Her narration relays greater focus on her family issues rather than on any threat posed to pregnant women. The ultrasound appointment changes everything, however, as she is forced to stage an escape from the hospital before she is taken into custody. The experience irrevocably changes Cedar’s view of hospitals, which are now an ominous reminder of how much she stands to lose.
Hospitals’ symbolism is thus inverted from safety to danger. Many emergency hospitals are set up in evacuated prisons, and the connotation is clear: Hospitals are no longer about care; they are about control. Women are detained and forced to give birth under strict supervision. Healthcare becomes a system of coercion, in which women can only access care through submission to the ruling religious cult. The administered drugs are not to benefit the women, but rather to confuse and incapacitate them. Cedar quickly realizes that she must escape. Hospitals now symbolize threat.
The novel ends in one of these prisons. Cedar gives birth to her child, who is quickly taken from her. Cedar’s hospital imprisonment now symbolizes society’s captivity by a barbaric new regime. However, there are still signs of hope. The plants and animals are also changing, and they begin to overrun the hospital. The walls are broken apart by invasive vines—and this, too, is a symbol: No matter what brutal systems humans invent, nature is inextinguishable and new life is inevitable.
Guns
Guns symbolize the characters’ ability to change and adapt to their increasingly dangerous circumstances. When Cedar first begins to grasp the seriousness of the situation, she decides to buy alcohol and ammunition. However, she intends to use neither, as they are meant for bartering. Later, when Phil brings a collection of guns into her house, she is appalled. Even as she is forced into hiding, Cedar struggles to overcome her deep aversion to firearms. Her initial reaction to Phil’s purchase expresses her limited recognition of the situation and symbolizes her struggle to come to terms with the escalating social upheaval.
One of the guns Phil brings home is a replica of an antique rifle, engraved with the depiction of a battle between American soldiers and Native Americans. The gun commemorates the military domination of a Native American tribe, and this only adds to Cedar’s disgust and incredulity. However, she later wields the gun in self-defense. The rifle becomes Cedar’s weapon of choice—not because she has come to endorse the engraving, but because the weapon reminds her of Phil. The gun becomes his legacy, symbolizing her enduring affection for the father of her child. Even after Phil betrays Cedar, she clings to the gun because it reminds her of a loved one.
Eddy is less sentimental about guns. He is relentlessly practical, and he organizes a raid on a nearby National Guard barracks. This raid allows him to equip his tribe with a small arsenal of guns, employing the veteran members of the tribe to train the others. Eddy may dislike violence, but he realizes that violence is now an inevitability. The tribe’s guns symbolize his practical nature. His actions, too, are symbolic, as Eddy sees himself as reclaiming power from those who stole land from his ancestors. Stealing guns from the United States government is a symbolic reclamation.
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By Louise Erdrich
