Defining Home

Being an international student, the novel Home by Marilynne Robinson does connected to me in a way that what a home is made of. It is when you are living thousands of miles from our family’s home, only then would we realize what it has really meant to you. The place where we grew up in brings a different kind of feelings to us, which makes us thinking of the reasons for that to happen. Home is not just a building as far as we know. The same belief is applied in Marilynne Robinson’s Home as she defines what a home is in the novel. Based on the story, Robinson develops the meaning of a home in Home as a place where a family has an understanding between family members. A home, according to the author, is a place where it builds up our character, a place where everything seems similar to us, and a place where we open up to one another about our feelings.

A home is a place where it defines us as a person. It is a place where our characteristics and behaviors are developed. As we were growing up in our home, the environments that our parent shaped in our home are the key factors in building up our characteristics. In Robinson’s Home, Reverend Robert and his wife provided their children with necessary religious teachings in their home so that their children ended up to be a righteous person. They provided a good environment for their children and became a role model for their children. This is why even though Jack is the most troublesome in the family, he never raised his voice to another. In the novel, Glory thought to herself when speaking to Jack, “his voice was soft as it had always been” (Robinson 36). Furthermore, Glory’s loving characteristic is also derived from the safe environment that her parent had provided in their home. Glory is attentive to her father and always care for her father’s feelings. Like when they received a letter from Jack, “she thought, Dear God, what if he’s wrong?” (Robinson 23). Glory did not want her father to get his hope high from the letter because it might make her father sad. Robinson build the characters according to their childhood experiences at home. The author recognizes a home in this novel as a place where all the characters’ traits are shaped up based on the environments that they received in their childhood home.

As we were growing up in our home, we get accustomed to every little thing in that place. This is simply because we grew up with these specific details and these details are what make that place feels like home. In Home’s novel, the author describes a home as a familiar place for the characters to be. The character’s detailed description of their childhood home shows how close they are with the place that they grew up in. For example, like the time when Glory was thinking to herself when she first arrived at her childhood home to take care of her father, “it was too tall for the neighborhood, with a flat face and a flattened roof and peaked brows over the windows” (Robinson 3). The author also defines a home as an affectionate place where the characters feel secure to be at. For example, in the novel, Jack explains why he thought about his home so many times, and he said “I think it made me feel safer sometimes” (Robinson 276). The characters’ ways of describing their home shows to how close they are to their childhood home and to what degree every specific thing that makes a home, their home.

Besides that, the author Marilynne Robinson defines a home as a place where we open up to other family members. In the novel, we can see that Jack and Glory had several moments of honesty between one another at their home, telling each other what was happening in their life at the moment. Like the time when Glory was being truthful to Jack that she was not married to her fake husband, “I was never married” (Robinson 118). Notice that Glory does not hesitate to tell the truth about herself to her brother which she had not met for twenty years. Glory was being honest so that it could persuade Jack to open up to her in return. In addition, it seems interesting to see how the author plays with the situational irony in the story. From the start, the character Jack has always been a mysterious factor in the story. The character Jack was quiet during his childhood, even among his siblings. However, when he went back to his home twenty years later, he shared almost everything about his life to his youngest sister that he barely talk when they were young. For instance, when Jack told Glory that he once worked as a dance instructor (Robinson 172). The author clarifies how the characters are behaving in a place called home. They are becoming more honest towards one another when they are at home than any other places. Thus, they will understand each other more and it will strengthen their bond as a family.

Robinson depicts the characters’ attitude at present time based on their childhood experiences that they had at their home. She also shows what a home feels like to the characters and how every little details in particular makes a home to the characters. Robinson defines home as to what the characters are behaving compared to anywhere else, and in Home, the characters are becoming more honest with each other. A home can be created and be destroyed. The author is saying that a home is not considered only as a building, but every other aspect that makes it a home; its people, its little details in it, and the people’s behaviors in it. A home should actually be a place that contains all of these things, and that is how Robinson defines Home.

Works Cited

Robinson, Marilynne. Home. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

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