Future Home of the Living God

“Worse, who are they to have destroyed the romantic imaginary Native parents I’ve invented from earliest childhood.”

As an adopted child, Cedar has built up a version of her biological parents in her imagination. The numerous ways in which her actual biological parents differ from those she has imagined make her feel as though she is being orphaned once again. After meeting her actual biological parents, the fictional status of her imagined parents is overwhelmingly felt, and Cedar must deal with the awkward, unsatisfying reality.

“You know, the news? The big news?”

The society around Cedar is coming undone, but the actual collapse is a shallow topic of conversation. Everyone feels so powerless and removed from events that they treat the end of the world as an ice breaker in an awkward conversation. The apocalypse assumes the same status as the weather or a sporting event, rather than the end of everything the characters know and love.

“Everything has changed while I wasn’t looking, changed without warning or word.”

Cedar’s life has changed forever. The societal collapse mirrors her pregnancy: Both events irrevocably alter her world, but only the pregnancy feels immediate and controllable to Cedar. The child inside her is a lived reality, whereas the end of human society as she knows it is something that occurs on the television. The larger changes in the world are beyond her understanding, but Cedar can take control of her life by learning more about her family and ensuring that her baby is born healthy.

“You’re PC even about the foraging apes our species may become in only a few generations.”

Cedar describes Glen and Sera as politically correct liberals. This characteristic annoys Cedar on many occasions, but she finds comfort in Glen’s predictable behavior. The social order is crumbling and no one knows what to do, so Glen acts in the only way he knows how: He talks glowingly of cave paintings as he would in normal times, refusing to adapt his personality or behavior to the current situation. He maintains his usual behavior because he feels powerless, but Cedar appreciates his routine bearing because it gives her a moment of nostalgia, a memory of a world that is soon to be gone.

“But the words on the screen are suddenly so paltry and finite and thin, impossibly futile.”

The “words on the screen” (48) function as a comment on the diary Cedar writes for her unborn child. The news report seems insubstantial, with the words potentially meaning nothing to an audience who have no power to stop what is happening. Likewise, the words in Cedar’s notebook may not aid whomever reads them in the future. The news report and the diary are both attempts to explain, rather than influence, the crisis. People are relegated to passive observation, able only to watch as everything falls apart.

“I am happier dissecting the past or dreading the future.”

Cedar claims that she is happier when she is either focused on the past or the future. This confession is ironic, given that she writes from the first-person in the present tense. Events in the diary are described as they happen, suggesting that Cedar is not at her happiest when writing. Her diary neither dissects the past nor dreads the future; instead, it documents the horrors of the present, in hopes of a future audience who may or may not benefit from its contents.

“The first thing that happens at the end of the world is that we don’t know what is happening.”

Cedar’s attempt to document the end of the world is riddled with paradox. She claims that the first thing that occurs as the world ends is that no one knows what is happening. However, if no one knows what is happening, then they cannot be sure that the world is irrecoverably ended, that it is approaching its end, or that the ending has even begun. This paradox points to the futility of trying to understand the collapse. The people have so little information that trying to make sense of the havoc is impossible.

“I am comforted because nothing we have done to this earth affects them.”

As the world around her deteriorates, Cedar looks up at the stars and finds the sight of the distant solar systems to be comforting. Though the novel never explains the sudden biological disruption to the world, Cedar and others seem to believe that humans are responsible. Humanity has failed to take care of the planet it inhabits, and Cedar finds comfort in the idea that humanity’s capacity for destruction is limited to one insignificant location—Earth.

“Please get in touch with Mother.”

Mother’s appearance on the many screens, and her call on women to “get in touch” (80) with her, provides an ironic contrast with Cedar’s search for her biological mother. Cedar began the story by getting in touch with her biological mother, but she discovers that motherhood is a complicated, messy idea that is not as simple as she first imagined. Cedar also depends on her adoptive mother and is terrified of the moment when she herself becomes a mother. Cedar’s diary is an attempt to “get in touch” (80) with the idea of motherhood, and Mother’s intrusive appearance on the screens shows that not all definitions of motherhood are desirable.

“On some level I don’t want to leave.”

Cedar’s first impressions of the prison hospital are filtered through the influence of drugs. With her brain pumped full of narcotics, she appreciates the positives of her imprisonment. She has food, a bed, and medical care, and part of her enjoys these things, even if she lacks her freedom. She has spent months running, terrified for the safety of her baby. In contrast, not only is she cared for in this place, but the responsibility of carrying an unborn child is taken out of her hands.

“We’re women, too, you slime!”

Agnes insults the nurses, but her insults are also an attempt to foster a common humanity between the prisoners and the guards. Agnes points out to the staff that they are also women, hoping to create a sense of solidarity and shared suffering. All the women suffer at the hands of misogyny, her insults suggest, so the women should help one another. Agnes’s insults are more pointed because they frame the nurses, technicians, and guards as traitors to the idea of womanhood. By pointing out how much the women have in common, Agnes reveals the craven nature of the other women’s behavior.

“Diseases killed ninety-nine percent of us.”

The genocide of the Native American people is a precedent for the collapse of society as described by Cedar. Eddy references the diseases and wars fought by the Natives after the arrival of the Europeans. For Eddy, Native American people have already endured their own social apocalypse, so they are better prepared for this new developing crisis. He sees the apocalypse both as an opportunity and as a revenge visited upon a guilty world.

“We are at twenty feet now, and you’re getting so big that I’ve got to get out of here.”

Cedar is happy that her child is growing, but the child’s growth presents a threat. She plots her escape from the hospital because, if she stays too long, she risks being killed during childbirth. Just as the danger grows with each passing day, She and Tia continue lengthening the secret rope. The rope becomes a metaphor for the danger Cedar faces: As the days pass, as the rope gets longer, as the baby gets bigger, she feels an increasingly urgent need to escape.

“I don’t know whether to believe these things, but here I am.”

Cedar realizes how little she understands about the world as it falls apart. Everything she hears is a rumor or speculation, turning her reality into an article of faith. She reaches a point where she must have faith in the rumors.

“That’s when I do the thing that will send me to hell.”

Cedar finds herself in a testing situation, in which she and her baby are both threatened by their captors. She kills Orielee in an act of desperation, but her guilt-stricken reaction shows that she has not lost all sense of the world as it once was. Cedar clings to the learned Christian morality that defined her life in the time before everything changed. Even with the life-threatening duress of the murder, she cannot relinquish the moral absolutes which come from her faith in God.

“It was her birthday.”

Orielee almost foiled the plan Tia and Cedar worked on for weeks. They murdered her rather than allow her to expose them. In the life-and-death situation, both women viewed Orielee as an existential threat and act accordingly. However, they learn afterward that Orielee was killed on her birthday. The small detail prevents the women from seeing Orielee as an inhuman obstacle and forces them to think of her as a human being, and this compounds their guilt. Tia and Orielee both fixate on Orielee’s birthday because they cannot resolve their guilt for killing a human being.

“That’s the problem with privilege, money, in this sort of situation.”

The nature of the collapse shows how material wealth does not protect against genetic mutation or religious zealotry. Tia, Sera, Glen, and other characters are all comfortably middle-class, insulated from many of the world’s problems. When the collapse begins, however, they are no more protected than anyone else. Wealth is useless in the face of this catastrophe.

“But unless Sera is relentlessly cheerful about our situation, at some point we’ll probably just sit down and get hysterical and die.”

Sera’s relentless optimism simultaneously annoys and comforts Cedar. Sera’s traits that annoyed Cedar as a teenager as still present, long after the social institutions of the world have fallen. The cheerfulness still annoys Cedar, but she appreciates that she has the opportunity to be annoyed. Sera’s behavior reminds Cedar of a more comforting past at a difficult moment. Annoyed, she still appreciates Sera’s resilience.

“Someone in this world will always be suffering on your behalf.”

Cedar accepts that suffering is a fundamental part of existence. Her Catholic faith centers the importance of suffering in religious doctrine, as Jesus was tortured and killed as sacrifice for humanity’s sins. Just as Jesus suffered on behalf of humanity, Cedar sees others suffer on her behalf. She does not enjoy their suffering but accepts this as a universal condition. From physical torture to labor pains to emotional distress, Cedar cannot envision a world without suffering in some capacity.

“Hell is what’s happening right now, here on earth.”

Sera does not believe in religion, but she still believes in hell. Her experiences as the world disintegrates and her daughter’s life is threatened are as close to hell as she can imagine. Sera lived a comfortable, successful life before the collapse, but she dedicates herself to saving her adopted daughter after she has lost everything else. Sera believes that she lives in hell, but she is determined to do what she can to help those she loves. Even in hell, Sera finds something to live for.

“Wait. I love her. But I hate her. And I love her.”

Cedar’s complicated view of her adoptive mother shows the complexities of motherhood. In the same moment, Cedar can appreciate and resent her mother, loving and hating her with equal measure. Cedar does not attempt to resolve the inherent inconsistencies in her thoughts toward Sera. Instead, she embraces the various emotions all at once. Both love and hate can exist at the same time, and Cedar embraces the irreducible nature of motherhood.

“And what sort of being am I, really?”

Cedar finally voices the question which has driven her forward through the plot. She has spent her life trying to understand her identity, whether as a mother, an adoptive child, a Native American, a Christian, or as anything else. Cedar wants to know the kind of being she really is, but she never receives an answer. Instead, the search itself defines her. Cedar spends her life in search of self-understanding, becoming a complex, nuanced being with a depth of interwoven identities.

“I thought I was a hero, but I’m not.”

As Cedar searches for her own identity, Phil comes to a horrific realization. He saw himself as a hero who helped women, but he has come to realize that he is not the person he considered himself to be. Phil was tortured until he betrayed Cedar. The torture is twofold, both physical and psychological. He is forced to live a loathsome version of himself, imbued with none of the nobility or heroism which once gave him purpose. Phil’s identity crisis ends with a painful revelation, leaving him emotionally and physically scarred. He is not the hero he once hoped.