Close Reading 12/13

"What mattered to Dr. Larch was the idea of reading aloud-it was a successful soporific for the children who didn't know what they were listening to, and for those few who understood the words and the story, the evening reading provided them with a way to leave St. Cloud's  in their dreams, in their imaginations (28).

Dr. Larch decides to read to the children every night, hoping that even if they do not understand it, they are taken away. He hopes that they are able to escape the reality that they are in and experience the dream world, a world of imagination, a world of woulda, coulda, shoulda. These are the things that these children are not able to experience, worried about whether they will have a home and a family who loves them. So Dr. Larch decides to read to them, even though they may not understand it.

This passage in particular relates to an article called "The Philosophical Baby" where the article discussed the woulda, coulda, shouldas, of life and counterfactuals. This quote from the book is discussing some of what the article discussed. Dr. Larch wants the orphans to use their imagination and to think of a world outside of the orphanage. He does not want the children to worry and he wants them to be able to escape the world that they know. The article discusses that and why it is important to do that. Dr. Larch is doing the children a service by allowing them to discover a world different from what they know.

This passage suggest the idea of intertexuality with references to books that Dr. Larch is reading. Dr. Larch discusses his reasoning behind picking the books. The relations to orphans is one of those reasons that Dr. Larch picks the books that he does. This idea of picking the books because of their relationship to the books containing characters who are orphans shows the idea of intertexuality. All books have a relationship with other books and Dr. Larch does direct allusions to these other texts. In a way, it shows how Dr. Larch wants to educate these boys, but the stories he is reading show how he wants the boys to think about a future outside of the orphanage. He wants the boys to imagine that there is something out there for them. That there is something more than the orphanage itself.

He also does it to show Homer in particular that there is a life out there for him as well. Homer only knows what he sees at the orphanage and the few homes he has been in. He has not really experienced much of the world and Dr. Larch wants him to have a good life. This may even be foreshadowing to Homer ending up in a good place that is not the orphanage after so many failed attempts at finding a home. Maybe this is an indication that Homer will find a place outside of the orphanage. This simple passage contains so much potential meaning and can connect to many different texts outside of just this one.