Future Home of the Living God

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017

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Before You Read

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, August 7-11

Part 1, August 15-September 21

Part 2, September 27-October 15

Part 2, October 19-24

Part 3, October 26-December 25

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Cedar’s Diary

Future Home of the Living God is structured as a diary, written by Cedar to introduce her unborn child to a world in flux. She wants to provide her child with documentation of how the world once was and how the child came into being. The diary itself thus symbolizes Cedar’s otherwise largely unexpressed optimism: She envisions herself giving the diary to her child, which presupposes a shared future in which there is enough stability for them to reflect on the past.

The diary is also a symbolic link between the old world and the new. As it is written in the present tense and unfolds in a day-by-day structure, the diary provides a detailed account of a collapsing society. The governmental broadcasts, the emergency votes, the panic buying, and lost electricity are all included as mundane details. Cedar’s humdrum tone as she describes this life-changing event indicates her powerlessness to halt the collapse. The old world becomes the new in the span of a few months, and the cataclysmic transformation is contained within the diary entries. Each entry therefore symbolizes the inevitable decline of the old world and the horrific rise of something more terrible in its place.

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