The cider house is where the migrant workers both live and work when they come to Ocean’s View orchard in picking season. The “cider house rules” are a list of rules that Olive Worthington has typed up and pinned to the wall. She re-types this list each fall, just as she tidies up the house and brings in fresh flowers. She is making the space clean and welcoming for the workers; at the same time, she is letting the workers know that the space should remain orderly, and that the workers will always be guests and transients.

Mr. Rose, the crew boss of the workers, tells Olive Worthington that he is “good at rules” (311). This seems like a benign reassurance at first but takes on a sinister double meaning. Mr. Rose is good at appearing to follow Olive Worthington’s rules, while actually enforcing parallel rules of his own. He keeps his crew and daughter in line through the threat of violence, since he is known for being good with a knife. While readers do not know what motivates Mr. Rose or what kind of violence he has seen, it seems clear that he is determined, as a Black man, to keep himself separate from his white overseers.