Unique

The definition of what a home is differs from person to person. Over the course of this semester we have read many different pieces that deal with what a “Home” is. This is quite fitting as for most of us this is our first time being away from home for more than a week or two. A home defines who we are, how we grow up in our homes shape the characters we grow up to be. This is portrayed well in Marilynne Robison’s Home, which tells the tale of two adults returning home in two very different scenarios. The perspectives of home in this novel are very unique even between characters who grew up under the same roof. What makes up a home and how one perceives a home is unique from person to person.

Growing up I had many different “homes”, which has resulted in my definition of home being unique. My dad was busy moving from job to job, and so we tagged along with him wherever he went. I was born in Chicago, and moved around to 3 different suburbs before I was 4 years old. From there we moved to a small town outside Cincinnati called Loveland, in Ohio. We settled down in one beautiful house for 8 solid years. Again my dad’s job picked us up and dropped us in Ames, IA. Where we lived in two very different houses, one in the country and one in a modern neighborhood. Finally, I’ve landed myself here in Iowa City, a place I will call home for at least the next 3 years. So my definition of home is going to be drastically different than someone who has only lived in one house their entire life. Which is absolutely fascinating, because when you say the word “home”, every single person in the room is going to think of some place different.

As mentioned before, the award winning novel Home by Marilynne Robinson does a great job of portraying a couple different views of what a home may be. In this story two of the main characters return to their childhood home. They are there partially to help with their dying father, but also because they had failed out in the real world. This shows that the definition of living at home changes even as you age. When you were young it was expected to be at home, when you go to college you’d visit back home from time to time, and just the same once you are out in the world as an adult. However, if you go to college or get a job, and are forced to come back to live at home permanently you are seen as a failure. Sure there are exceptions to the rule, but the majority of the time returning home after being sent off is a bad thing. The theme of returning home is something that is brought up often in Robinson’s Home. While each character comes home on different terms, each has had their own breakdown to bring them back to where they started.

In the story, Glory constantly contemplates about what her life had been before she moved back home. She is brought home after a breakup with someone she was engaged with, and after figuring out that her passion was no longer in teaching. More than once in the novel Glory reflects on her dismay of having to return to live with her father, “The town seemed different to her, now that she had returned there to live… She was thoroughly used to Gilead as the subject and scene of nostalgic memory… her returning now, to stay, as her father said, had turned memory portentous,” (Robinson 7). As for most of us, the picture of home is sweet for Glory. When she returns the memories flood back to her, and although they are good memories the town is now tainted in her mind because the event that brought her back to this house was negative. So that is the place she went to seek sanctuary, and we don’t know in this novel if she truly found inner peace by the end.

The other main character going through a struggle in this novel is Jack. His situation is less clear, because we don’t quite know where he has been for the past 20 years. But we do hear that he has been in and out of jail, and that his life has been quite the struggle recently. His motives to come home could be selfish or selfless; to clear his conscience for going missing for 20 years, or to help his dad find peace in his final days. Jack’s childhood is different than the rest of the Boughton’s. The book tells us that he didn’t like being around the other kids, and spent a lot of time out of the house. In the beginning of the novel we have a look into his childhood, after trampling their neighbor’s field the Boughton go in to apologize for their actions. The neighbor calls out Jack, “’Oh yes,’ she said, ’I know who you are. The boy thief, the boy drunkard! While your father tells the people how to live! He deserves you!’” (Robinson 12). He was a trouble maker, and the whole town knew it. All of these things factor into what Jack Boughton thinks of when he thinks of home. So in his return it is not a place of great memories as it was for Glory. It is a place that he resents, that he has been trying to distance himself from. So when Jack hears the word ‘home’ his interpretation is going to be much different than the rest of the family’s because it is not a place that he is as fond of compared to the others.

The thoughts of home are unique between all of the Boughton characters we meet in the novel Home. Glory finds this place as a tainted sanctuary, a place where she can recover and get back on her feet but the thoughts of failure still haunt her. Jack’s idea of home is simply poisoned; before returning he had distanced himself as far away as he could be for 20 full years. Each character thinks of home in a unique manner, as do each and every one of us. Nobody’s experience was exactly the same, therefore nobody will have the exact same perception of what a home is.

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