The story presented in Louise Erdrich’s novel under the title Future Home of the Living God is an example of a hero’s story. Being set in pre-apocalyptic America, the dystopian novel is written from the first-person perspective. It conveys a journey of a pregnant twenty-six-year-old Native American woman named Cedar Songmaker. As the context of the plot implies, being pregnant at this time is a challenging experience since humanity has started the period of reverse evolution and is gradually losing the ability of healthy reproduction. Pregnancy is a unique journey for Cedar, a Native American adopted into a white liberal family because she has to overcome multiple obstacles and temptations. She is facing psychological difficulties in meeting her birth family, understanding her heritage and genetics, and avoiding the chase of governmental controlling institutions to protect her unborn child.
As the story begins, the readers are introduced to the main character in need to meet her biological mother to clarify her genetics as she is preparing to give birth to a child. This experience is complicated by the overall situation in which she finds herself. She is afraid of telling her adoptive family about her pregnancy. She is sure that “this would completely upset my parents, who actually have more than they need” (Erdrich 4). Moreover, she feels that her meeting the biological family is a betrayal of the Songmakers. The ambiguity behind the decision to go to the Ojibwe reservation induces much psychological burden, but she copes with it.
The changing times are marked by the governmental actions toward controlling reproduction. Pregnant women need to be reported to the agencies and kept under control in special facilities. Escaping the Unborn Protection Society and informants, pregnant Cedar has to hide and live in continuous fear. Moreover, she is worried about her child’s genetic predispositions and his or her destiny after birth. The background for these challenges is the overall uncertainty about the situation, which is reflected in a partial description of the world on a general scale. The words of Cedar’s parents demonstrate that the situation is “taking a more ominous turn” and that “the president is talking about declaring the state of emergency” (Erdrich 8). Thus, this lack of information and the fear of the unknown change lead the main heroine’s journey through being captivated in a detention facility, running away from it, and hiding from the government’s hunting.
Overall, the author portrays multiple hardships Cedar has to overcome to arrive at her final destination – the child’s birth. Although the expectations from the ending are that all the sacrifice will not be pointless and Cedar will be finally happy, the novel ends with the child being taken away from the mother, and Cedar subject to state-controlled impregnation. My interpretation of such an ending is that, in agreement with the requirements of the dystopian genre, the writer unveils the harshness of the reality that strikes people regardless of their efforts.
In terms of future research on the topic of this novel, the interpretation of women’s rights through dystopian means seems to be a relevant issue to expand on. It would be interesting to find out how the ideas on women’s freedom and bodily independence are reflected through Cedar’s journey. It would also be important to explore the place of the novel in the context of feminist literature. Probably, a brief comparison of the novel to similar dystopian feminist works would shed light on the commonalities and allow for identifying the message Erdrich is sending with the novel.
Work Cited
Erdrich, Louise. Future Home of the Living God. Hachette UK, 2017.