Comparing Home in Richard Ford's I Must Be Going and Scott Sander's Homeplace

For the first time in 130 years, more young adults are living with parents until their mid thirties. Part of this could be an emotional attachment keeping them from leaving home because after they leave, everything will change. However, many are losing their real sense of home and are just using it as a place where they can avoid paying bills and many other responsibilities. Many young adults now do not understand the extensive sacrifice it is to leave their one and only home. In “On Going Home,” Joan Didion expounds on her struggle to connect with her current house, in a nostalgic and resigned tone, and vivid imagery, symbolism, and comparison Didion expresses the regret she feels every time she remembers she left her “home”.

“Home is where the heart is.” In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros develops this famous statement to depict what a “home” really represents. What is a home? Is it a house with four walls and a roof, the neighborhood of kids while growing up, or a unique Cleaver household where everything is perfect and no problems arise? According to Cisneros, we all have our own home with which we identify; however, we cannot always go back to the environment we once considered our dwelling place. The home, which is characterized by who we are, and determined by how we view ourselves, is what makes every individual unique. A home is a personality, a depiction of who we are inside and

The novel begins with a journey, both physical and emotional; the Brennans are physically moving houses and towns, but also moving into new, unfamiliar territory. The leaving of ‘home’ is synonymous with the leaving of what id known, familiar and comfortable, in a literal and metaphorical sense.

What does the word home mean? In the essay “On Going Home” by Didion she recreates her feelings and thoughts about her meaning of home. Family is a big part of one’s life and important one at that and Didion uses it as the center of her work. The work itself is about re- defining what home truly is.

As well as attacking the habits of others, Sanders uses his own experiences to illustrate his way of life, writing, “The longing to become an inhabitant rather than a drifter sets me against the current of my culture” (18). Sanders’s statement that he, unlike others, has managed to resist the “current” of his culture that forces people to be transient creates the impression that he is preaching about his superior method of living. He thereby suggests that he is better than all of the others who do follow the call that inspires people to move. At the end of his piece, Sanders makes his argument even more moralistic by tying the desire to move to a lack of spiritualism. He makes an allusion to idolism in declaring, “Only by knocking against the golden calf of mobility, which looms so large and shines so brightly, have

I think the term “home” means a place where family members lived together. Everyone in the family supports each other, care about each other, respect each other and everyone gone through hard times together. The home may not be big, but it is cozy, it may not be very fancy, but it is happy to live there. This idea of home applies to the text “Fire From the Rock” By Sharon M. Draper very well. Sylvia and her family lived in Little Rock, Arkansas, during segregation. Sylvia’s neighbor, Mr. Crandall, treated black people badly. Once, Sylvia’s little sister, Donna Jean was bitten by one of Mr. Crandall’s dogs purposely. The other time when Sylvia’s brother, Gary was beaten by Mr. Crandall’s kids because Gary wanted fairness for the black people. Also when everyone in the town knew that Sylvia was one of the black students to attend Central High School, Sylvia faced more pressure and troubles from the white people. But no matter what happen to Sylvia and her family, they always supports each other and care about each other, everyone in the family stood together and gone through hard times together.

The concept of home has a plethora of definitions. For example, one may feel at home in a multitude of places or with varying groups of people. In his TED talk, Pico Iyer, discusses questions about home, which aids in formulating a definition. One of his definitions is the place “where you find yourself,” which corresponds a discussion concerning home in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (Iyer). Through Janie’s experience, a home for her is a place where she has a voice. This is paramount for Janie as it allows her to vocalize her opinions and feelings, thus aiding in finding herself. In nearly all of her relationships, however, this voice was taken from her, restraining her from learning about herself, her desires and needs,

Through her memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls is implying that home is wherever a person’s loved ones are. Home is an abstract idea in her novel because the Walls family does not have a concrete place to call home. They can’t seem to stay in one place. They just go where the wind takes them because as long as they have each other, there is no need to worry about anything else. The Walls children have a sense of safety and

Home./hōm/ noun- the place where one lives permanently. In The Glass Castle, a true memoir, by Jeannette Walls, talks about how the family moved around a lot. They were always moving because Rex Walls, their dad, constantly was losing his job or getting in trouble with the law. The kids identities were changed a lot throughout the story. Maureen, the youngest child in the family, changed the most. Her identity was shaped and made her into who she is today. Maureen identity goes from a small child, to sheltered sibling, to a christian, and finally to a codependent adult.

The quote, “You can leave home all you want, but home will never leave you”, by Sonsyrea Tate relates to the novel Ethan Frome in that that main character, Ethan, cannot escape the life he had created. Ethan is a victim of his own demise because his fatal flaw is being too passive which prevents him from taking the necessary actions to improve his life. Despite all the times he attempted to leave, every night he would return home because a home is everyone's final destination at the end of a day. Homes gives people direction and a sense of belonging which is another reason why Ethan in the end cannot leave and start over.

He views home as a material object. Iyer believes that a home has no real meaning and does not necessarily need to be a single place or recollection. This is evident as in his writing he expresses how “all the world is home” (Iyer 310). He says that his type of people do not need to be situated in a single place with the same art, music, literature, and atmosphere. They can travel the world and feel as if they are at home no matter what culture they meet. I do not agree with Iyers view on home. Although you can travel and move within homes, there should still always be that one place where you can

In Anthony Grooms', "Homespace," the speaker's mind-set remains constant from the setting that he had just returned from and in the new setting where the poem takes place. In contrast to Mora's poem, Grooms' tone never alternates; it is a stable conscience feeling of being in a

A person’s home should be more than a place to shelter them from the elements. It should be a place where one could express him/her self freely and not have to worry about any harm coming to them. In the play Trifles Mrs. Wright lived in a house that was anything but calm. In block eleven,

Being “at home” is about people having a sense of peace with who they really are, not fitting into rigidly defined group identities that strain people’s basic loyalties (Walsh, p.243).

In the novel Brooklyn the definition of home is challenged, Toibin compares a home where there is familial simplicity and ease (Ireland), one with daring heights and chances (Brooklyn, New York) and Irishness. Eve Walsh Stoddard defines Irishness as “Irish by ancestry, a member of the diaspora”(167). Toibin exemplifies how those two representations of home conflict with Eilis’ “Irishness” of that time period. Personally, I would define home as a place where you are wanted. Eilis was put into diaspora initially because of the lack of career opportunities in Ireland. She had to immigrate to Brooklyn, New York, in search of greener pastures. Eilis was moved to this with the