46 pages • 1 hour read
The House of God
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Symbols & Motifs
Sexualization of Young Female Bodies
In The House of God, young female bodies—those of nurses and patients—are often sexualized. Updike’s statement in the Introduction about nurse-doctor sex being a “relief” for both parties suggests that Shem intends the erotic connotations to signal healthy life, vitality, and energy. Such associations contrast with the overwhelming sense of death, illness, and fear that the rest of the book imparts. Shem uses the male erotic gaze on female bodies as a way of representing intense life-force, so to speak, since sex usually has a life-giving and/or pleasurable effect, and presents it alongside the intense death-force depicted in the rest of the book. Roy comments that, in the ICU, “Amidst the dying, these nurses were flaunting life” (282). Ultimately, of course, the life-giving qualities of the sexual activity in the book are not enough to overcome the deathliness of practicing medicine for Roy—only the study of the mind is presented as being able to do that.
Stethoscopes/Medical Tools
As one of the most visible signs that a person practices medicine, the stethoscope is an important symbol in The House of God. Various characters’ use of the stethoscope indicates their relationship to and status within the medical system. The Fat Man uses his stethoscope in a way it wasn’t intended when he uses the “reverse stethoscope” method on Anna, indicating his subversive role within the established medical system. When Roy tries to do the same thing, he sends his patient into cardiac arrest, a result that indicates he’s less experienced than the Fat Man. One doctor wears his stethoscope pushed down into his pant pocket, indicating his deep entrenchment in the medical system while perhaps also indicating that the tool has become more of an ornament or status symbol than a functional instrument for patient care.
The stethoscope is supposed to let the doctor listen to the patient’s heart and lungs, deeply vital organs that might be considered the center of the human body or human person. Ironically, most of the doctors do not access the emotional center of their patients, even if they do access the physical center. At the end of the book, Roy throws his black doctor’s bag into the air, causing the medical instruments inside to fly out and land on the parking lot surface. This act mirrors his rejection of medicine for psychiatry.
Cars
As in other works of literature, cars are a shorthand for status in the book. Gilheeny and Quick admire the “lovely red Volvo” Berry drops off Roy in (177), and their doing so also signals their admiration of the psychological mindset Berry stands for—they act on this admiration at the end of the story by quitting their police officer jobs to become lay analysts. Chuck lusts after a big black limousine (353), and when Berry and Roy are at the wealthy patient Nate Zock’s house, they see “the butler […] waxing Berry’s Volvo, trying to match the shine on Nate’s white El Dorado” (344). Gilheeny and Quick also use their police car to escort Roy to various places in the novel, indicating their own subversion within the police system (much like the Fat Man used the stethoscope in an unorthodox way—see the second symbol above).
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