Octavia Butler So Much Like Coming Home Analysis

In Kindred Octavia Butler highlights how Dana’s fear of the past will interfere with the present. Butler demonstrates how Dana tries to fit into the 1800s to accomplish her goals and not have consequences in the present. The patriarchy is shown in both time periods although it grows or manifests differently. In kindred Dana travels back in time to save Rufus her ancestor who always seems to get himself in trouble. Dana is trying to make a difference in the past but it is very hard when all she does is cause more trouble than anything else. Her husband is then left behind in the past for five years and that changes him and ultimately leaves a mark on him. Dana tries to make a difference and education the slaves in the past so that they can protect themselves but it backfires and Dana gets punished. This shows the patriarchy in both periods that a man is viewed as more powerful than women and is considered the man of the House. The past shapes the future. The past ultimately makes the future.

The author, using the narrator as a medium, conveys how dependent women have misplaced values through the narrator’s dislike of her situation as, well as her desire of material items and attention. The narrator, a woman who is dependent on her husband, describes her thoughts on her new environment in Colorado. Wharton writes, “She hated it there from the first. Nobody knew her or cared for her; there was no one to wonder at the good math she made, or to envy the new dress and the visiting cards which were still a surprise to her” (Wharton 416). This moment in the text is significant as the author provides us insight into the narrator's thoughts, highlighting how the narrator feels this sense of “hate” towards her current situation. It’s also revealed how the narrator’s dislike derives from her lack of attention and approval which she had previously

The setting of the home is used throughout both texts. This evokes a sense of comfort and homeliness in the reader, therefore making them proportionally more sympathetic towards the relationships of both the central couples in question and allows them to interrelate the situations in their own lives. Noah’s 1946 plantation home is one that is full of life. His home is a refuge that is laden with memories of Allie. In particular, ‘a picture of [Allie’s] dreams’ is located in the central location of the house, ‘see desire in . . . every stroke’ symbolizes the ever-changing nature of their relationship, just as Allie was ‘adding to it every day, changing it as our relationship changed’. Much like Allie’s painting, Henry and Clare’s house in Chicago mirrors their married life, marked by ups and downs. It has seen their characters and relationships develop, at times being a safe haven where the house ‘envelops us, watches us, contemplates us’ as though it were a guardian. The house, however, also sees Henry’s frequent disappearances and Clare’s endless longing, a ‘love intensified by absence’. It ‘watches’ the many arguments, Clare’s multiple miscarriages, and eventually Henry’s death, morphing and altering with each new event. Through the setting of the nursing home, Sparks is able to evoke the emotions of longing, distress, and pity in the reader. It is a place of sadness and loss, with the constant reminder of an entire life, not remembered, ‘she would stare at forgotten offspring, hold paintbrushes that inspired nothing, and read love letters that brought back no joy.’ This loss symbolizes the unpredictable way is which a love and a relationship can change so dramatically so quickly. Sparks is able to embed the idea that once a deep and ideal love is found, it may not remain so pristine and complete after a time. This is

First, a reader must look at the Connie’s life and typical routines. “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home…” this displays

As she burrowed her face into his chest, she inhaled his familiar scent of perspiration and spicy bay rum. Shifting around, she nestled her back into Asa’s solid chest and shoulder. When he wrapped his arms around her, and she could feel the rhythmic beating from his heart. Moored work boats filled the glassy, calm harbor, many of them on their way to the Northeast after a winter in the South and the Caribbean. Since land and sea were in a constant tussle for wind in Nell’s coastal town, it was unsettling to her when it died. When Asa began to caress her arm, a haunting penny

Although they do not have much money, the mother never allows herself to forget the high status of her old relatives: ‘“Your great-grandfather was a former governor of this state . . . Your grandfather was a prosperous landowner. Your grandmother was a Godhigh.”’ Her family’s home, which was once a symbol of their prosperity, now had “worn rugs and faded draperies.” The home’s decrepit condition is comparable to the state that her family’s high stature is now in. In essence, the home as well as the old life which she is clinging to is now gone, and what is left is rotted stairways and “Negroes living in [the house].”

In both cases, the theme of insanity creates a detachment of societal norms. Hooker’s hint of insanity develops at the beginning of the book, when he goes on to describe the conditions in which he lives in, and goes on to state that his “…house was just on the outskirts of town, unlike the rest of the town’s people. All through the house they closed doors and drew shades, they got dead quiet. That is how his father liked it after Jessie came home” (Findley 9). This life of isolation has already given Hooker the incentive to detach from society, as he is constantly seen as a character that has trouble with understanding societal ideals. He is seen as a character who has been forced to detach from society when his mother Jessie comes home wanting to live in isolation after the miscarriage of her unborn child; therefore allowing some of his mothers negative behaviours about life to rub off on him. Through the characterization of Hooker, Findley explores the vice potential of such a subject, who becomes the servant of destruction of the social structures that produced him. In Julie Salem-Wiseman’s essay Insanity Begins at Home: Madness in the Family in Timothy Findley’s Last of the Crazy People, she states that “ Findley creates a Laingian portrait of how a disordered and degenerate social reality--of which the Winslows especially Hooker are an extreme representation--produces subjects who have not only internalized the social pathology that has formed them but also use the

Setting and the sense of place is extremely important to authors, specifically those of Southern Literature. Place is one of the most unique aspects in the development of Welty’s writing and in her own evaluation of fiction in general. Welty considers setting to be an influential device for a writer of fiction. She sees setting as a way to provide roots for her characters and a realistic basis for her stories. The setting in the story takes place in Mrs. Larkin’s garden in Mississippi. Welty uses setting in this story cleverly as the garden serves as an appropriate setting for her inner struggle because of the garden’s paradoxical ability to please and to destroy (Brown 242). During an interview given by Linda Kuehl, Welty was asked if place

The character Dana is mysteriously transported from her home in 1976 back to 1816. She experiences the daily routines of a slave in the 1816. She becomes accustomed to the oppression that she is forced to encounter. For instances, the first time Rufus refers to her a nigger (Butler 25-31), she becomes defensive, but over time the more she is in his environment, she begins to makes excuses to justify his actions (Butler 60-61). There are many points in the novel that contradict what society believes happened to all slaves. Rumors that slaves only picked cotton, and there always being an overseer watching the slavery work, are not presented in the novel. The many twists on Butler’s narrative in this piece leave readers to question many of the long lasting statements told to them about

This writer’s own thoughts: This story is set in post colonial era, the time frame after American Civil War or American War of Independence between the Southerners and Northern States. While the narrator has serious trepidations about resettling in North- Central Carolina, his wife’s poor health

Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson’s 1980 novel, tells the tale of Ruth and her sister, Lucille, in the fictitious town of Fingerbone, Idaho, as they grow up in their unforeseeable aunt Sylvie’s care following their mother’s suicide. Ruth develops a complicated relationship between environment and its inhabitants, particularly her sister’s pursuit of a more stable life. If one asks Ruthie where “home” is, would she say Fingerbone?

In Valerie Martin’s novel, Property, the reader is drawn into the engrossing story of Manon Gaudet and her life on a Louisiana sugar plantation in 1828. Manon lives a life full of bitterness as the wife of a plantation owner, a man whom she completely detests. Interestingly enough, the husband is never named, he is always referred to as just her husband which I believe reveals the fact that their relationship is not one of love but one of power. She rejects the stereotypical idea of a wife of the time and often outright refuses to preform her “wifely duties”, such as bearing his child. While the story is seen through Manon’s perspective, we also see much of Sarah’s life, who is Manon and her husband’s slave. Sarah is living an unhappy life because she has been continually abused by Manon’s husband and forced to conceive his child. As we can see, both women are living unhappy lives for different reasons; however, the reasons begin to assimilate over time. During the whole of the novel, Martin captures the readers attention and allows them to place themselves in the shoes of Manon and truly resonate with her beliefs in the world. By focusing the novel on the story of two women who are the “property” of one man and who are actively in pursuit of their freedom, it requires the reader to truly acknowledge the lack of power and privilege women had in the 19th century.

“Home is where the heart is,” is a statement we have heard all our life. In Robert Frost’s “The Death of the Hired Man,” Mary and Warren have a dispute on their disagreement with the definition of home. Mary’s definition, “Something you somehow haven’t to deserve,” implies that home is an open place for Silas to return to. On the other hand, Warren’s explanation, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,” is emphasizing that the family is compelled to allow Silas in.

Home, at this time, is a living tableau of both war and peace. If only Kitt could keep the peace, or her sanity, for a minute. But that was not in her sister’s nature. At the peak of the screeching, Elizabeth had slipped through the doors into the boundless escape. Now halfway to her undecided destination, squinting into the sun’s glare, she could see as far west as the identical mountainous peak and as far east as the other indeterminate green mounds. No other living souls, except of the non-human kind, to interrupt her thoughts. Though, no thoughts were really streaming through her head right now. It was an utter moment of stillness. This spot always held her captive in one place - she stopped and stared, as always, a little longer than necessary. With the view long memorized in her mind from previous walks, Elizabeth turns back to the path of gravel and scattered sticks and continues on. The sheer material of the dress flowing behind her. Margeurite, her mother, had balked at her first sight of Elizabeth’s expensive gown, at that time, tucked inelegantly under one of her father’s old overcoats. The same reaction was given to a beautiful de la Renta number

When one thinks of the word house, a place of comfort, love, and support comes to mind. Meanwhile, society tends to forget that initially home is a house: a constructed place of living that has all the materialistic essentials to survive in it; but is not a home because it has no feeling of love, safety or serenity within it. These two words, “home” and “house” seem so similar, but are very different in their meanings. In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, houses and homes are depicted very neatly and compared with one another, as the residents of those. Even though everything origins around Breedloves’ family and shown through their lives, almost all of the characters are preoccupied with defining their social class status in Midwestern society during the Great Depression. There is an evident desire to escape poverty and the limiting circumstances of the time and their social classes; represented through houses and physical space characters in. In addition to the social and economical influences, houses in the novel also symbolize the emotional situations and values of the characters who inhabit them. At the time, owning a house says something about one 's income and social class status, especially for African Americans, which are coming out of the age of slavery. However, the pressure from the environment creates emotional situations that hard to overcome and cuts all accomplished efforts to none. Followed by the mental state characters’