Close Reading 12/26

"It may be especially easy to deceive loved ones-the people who love you are the least willing to acknowledge your deceit. But if you love no one, and feel that no one loves you, there's no one with the power to sting you by pointing out that you're lying" (99).

The idea of deceit as Dr. Larch describes it makes it harder for people who feel love and love to deceit people. They are much more honest than people who do not feel love. The people who feel the love also feel disappointment when they do lie and hurt the ones they love. They can feel what they are doing wrong, unlike those who do not see it in the people the love. They do not understand that what they are doing is hurtful. Those who do not feel love find it easier to lie and cheat others than those who do. In a way, he is saying that orphans who grow up without love are more likely to be deceitful.

In this short passage, Dr. Larch is showing his concern for Homer. He is concerned that Homer does not feel love inside of the orphanage that he has grown up in. Dr. Larch is not sure that Homer understands that there are people who truly care for him, himself included. He is worried that Homer will grow up trying to be deceitful because he does not know what love is and he does not know that what he does can hurt the people that he loves.

This also shows that Dr. Larch indeed loves Homer. If he is thinking about how deceit harms orphans, he is also concerned for Homer. He cares and loves Homer very much, in a way that the orphanage has become Homer's home, the only place where Homer truly feels accepted. Which in a way has also worried Dr. Larch. Dr. Larch does not want the orphanage to become a forever home for any of the orphans. But, he also knows he has to show fatherly love for Homer so that he grows up into a working citizen that does not deceit, lie, or try to deliberately hurt other people.

This also foreshadows the few times that Homer did actually do deceitful things behind Dr. Larch's back. He helped Melony destroy the house in town, and he kept a picture of a woman hidden from Dr. Larch. He does these things, very teenage like, yet he does not tell Dr. Larch. It is deceitful, but also expected of a teenager, and so Dr. Larch tries to find a way to teach Homer not to do those things. He tries to make him grow up faster. All of these things, Dr. Larch does out of love.

The idea of love being a restraint is an interesting perspective. It is the idea that we try to not hurt those that we love. Dr. Larch discovers that the people we love are the ones we are less likely to hurt and lie to. We try to please them, an idea that he tries to instill in the orphans awaiting adoption. He is doing one of the only things that he tried not to do, place love in an orphanage, encouraging the children to stay there.