The meaningful proverb “Home is where the heart is” reflects on how home is not simply defined as a location on a map, but a place where cherished memories and a loving family live. Between Home by Gwendolyn Brooks and La Puerta by José Antonio Burciaga, the concept of home is fluid, shifting constantly between ideas of a strong and magnetizing pull towards home and sometimes quite the opposite, as something that could be given up if necessary. These two stories’ defining themes are shaped by a similar sense of both sweet and sour nostalgia and a sense of family, and yet the authors differ in how their tone and characters react to the possibility of losing everything. Both stories’ homes have a powerful ability to create an environment which envelops the characters in a combination of many emotions that illustrates a general theme. These bittersweet feelings create a unique atmosphere that reinforces the idea that a home is special. The homes in both La Puerta and Home tether the characters through a linking of family ties. They use family in order to show how a home is not a home without the people in it. In Home, this is shown quite clearly when Maud Martha cries “He loves this …show more content…
In Home, Brooks wrote that “she felt that the little line of white, sometimes ridged with smoked purple, and all that cream-shot saffron would never drift across any western sky except that in back of this house. The rain would drum with as sweet a dullness nowhere but here.” This passage perfectly encompasses how memories can so powerfully affect the idea of home. La Puerta includes this idea as well, as Sinesio’s dread at leaving is explained: “[His] heart sank as if he was being pushed out or had already left his home… Already he missed his three children, Celso, Jenaro, and Natasia his eldest, a joy every time he saw her. ‘An absence in the heart is an empty pain,’ he thought.” These stories share a great heartache for the
In the book, “Eleven Seconds” by Travis Roy, he talks about himself about what had happened to him during his hockey game and how he got injured in his hockey game. Roy becomes part of, and moves on from, many different “homes”. All the different homes remain significant throughout his life. Even though these different places are not permanent homes, he experiences a sense of home that remains important to him. Here are three examples of the “homes” Travis Roy becomes part of and how each of them had such an enduring influence on him. Those three “homes” Roy finds significant in his life are, Maine, Boston, and Shepherd Center.
Esperanza, the main character of The House on Mango Street, a novella written by Sandra Cisneros in 1984, has always felt like she didn’t belong. Esperanza sought a different life than the ones that people around her were living. She wanted to be in control of her life, and not be taken away by men as so many others around her had. Esperanza wanted to move away from Mango Street and find the house, and life she had always looked for. Through the use of repetition, Sandra Cisneros conveys a sense of not belonging, that can make a person strong enough to aspire to a better life.
In their lifetimes, many people experience the loss of loved ones and the departure of children. One of the most difficult things to do is to keep strong and good relations with friends and family members, before it is too late. The short story “David Comes Home”, by Ernest Buckler, follows Joseph, who worries his son David never had the same connection to the land as he does, though memories of past experiences, finding old belongings, and discovering the boy’s true feelings, resolve this conflict.
As a young child, Rodriguez finds comfort and safety in his noisy home full of Spanish sounds. Spanish, is his family's' intimate language that comforts Rodriguez by surrounding him in a web built by the family love and security which is conveyed using the Spanish language. "I recognize you as someone close, like no one outside. You belong with us, in the family, Ricardo.? When the nuns came to the Rodriquez?s house one Saturday morning, the nuns informed the parents that it would be best if they spoke English. Torn with a new since of confusion, his home is turned upside down. His sacred family language, now banished from the home, transforms his web into isolation from his parents. "There was a new silence in the home.? Rodriguez is resentful that it is quiet at the dinner table, or that he can't communicate with his parents about his day as clearly as before. He is heartbroken when he overhears his mother and father speaking Spanish together but suddenly stop when they see Rodriguez. Thi...
Homesick is a novel that exposes many different relationships, the strength of relationships, and how they can endure tremendous pain. The various relationships between Alec and Vera, Alec and Daniel, and Vera and Daniel are considerably different because of the variation in generation represented by each character. Each relationship in this family has its strengths and weaknesses depending on the past of the relationships. The relationships in the novel Homesick are seen through all of the character's eyes, so we can see how each character felt about the other characters. These characters do not tend to say what they think, we can see this many times throughout the novel. These relationships can be observed by seeing how they act, speak, and treat one another.
In unique ways for each girl, “home is a prison” and the only way they escape it is through Esperanza (Kalay 123). Esperanza is a symbol of hope as her name foretells. From the beginning Esperanza attracts the girls of the neighborhood to her side. One of the older Latina girls in Esperanza’s life is Alicia. Being a young lady of about 18, Alicia, takes her mother’s place as the one who cooks and cleans. She works hard from sun up to sun down then goes to the university. Alicia symbolized all the young women who worked hard enough in life to one day escape from the poor streets of Chicago. But like many Latina females, Alicia had a difficult life with her father, who abused her as Cisneros suggests. Alicia could escape the poverty but in the end she was just another woman in a male dominant world and nothing more. Not many girls were like Alicia; Sally, for example, was the
The House on Mango Street is filled with beautiful and relatable stories that foretell the development of the main character. In Valdes’ review, she makes a strong analysis of how Cisneros creates “human presence that transcends the time, place, and condition of the composition to create a literary metaphor for a woman coming of age” (55). Valdes explains how Cisneros creates a “metaphor” in which she express and examines her feelings and emotions in an elegant way. Valdez also shows that Cisneros creates a setting in which shows the reader how to become free in a lonely environment that many young women, especially those who are a minority, can relate to when they are
In Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love,” Mel McGinnis’ occupation as a cardiologist, a physician that mends broken hearts, stands in stark contradiction to his claim to understanding the workings of the heart as it pertains to loving and being loved. The discord between healing his patient’s hearts and his inability to recognize his own malady of heart is exaggerated by how he deals with the relationship of Ed and Terri, as well as that of the elderly accident victims and his ex-wife Marjorie.
Gisele Pineau’s novel Exile According to Julia is all about a sense of belonging, of home. As this novel demonstrates, home is not always a place: sometimes it is a person. For the young narrator of this story home is embodied in her grandmother Julia (affectionately called Man Ya). This is a story of immigration, exile, alienation, and of discovery of home and self. The novel details Man Ya’s ‘exile’ from her home in Guadalupe to Paris to live with the narrator and her family. Depressed and constantly longing for home, Man Ya eventually returns to Guadalupe leaving the narrator and family bereft. After her departure, the narrator continuously writes to Man Ya as years go by. She never responds. Eventually the family returns to Guadalupe to be with Man Ya. The novel ends with Julia sharing her Guadalupe with her grandchildren, climbing trees, gardening, and laughing. The time that the narrator spent with her grandmother had a profound impact on her life. Julia was her teacher, her connection to her Caribbean ancestry, and her home.
Who does not want a home? A shelter to sleep and a roof to dine under. Of course no one wanted to stay home forever, but once in awhile and even when far away, they will long to return to that sacred place, the place where they grew up and the place they have left behind, home. The desire for a home (or house to be precise, though there was not much of a different for this case) was realistically reflected through a fiction work of Sandra Cisneros, a Mexican American write, a story called The House on Mango Street, where we shall discuss about its setting, plot and character.
Fun Home shows how as the reader we can become educated and heal from the stories like that of Alison Bechdel’s childhood. We also can see Alison’s journey of healing as well. This full circle journey is why literature is so versatile and important to our society and culture. We depend on the creation and growth of literary themes like the ones we see in Fun House to help us grow and deal with the real world.
“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 how we grow through our life experiences. In her personal, Cisneros depicts Esperanza Cordero’s coming-of-age through a series of vignettes about her family, neighborhood, and personalized dreams. Although the novel does not follow a traditional chronological pattern, a story emerges, nevertheless, of Esperanza’s search to discover the meaning of her life and her personal identity. The novel begins when the Cordero family moves into a new house, the first they have ever owned, on Mango Street in the Latino section of Chicago. Esperanza is disappointed by the “small and red” house “with tight steps in front and bricks crumbling in places” (5). It is not at all the dream-house her parents had always talked about, nor is it the house on a hill that Esperanza vows to one day own for herself. Despite its location in a rough neighborhood and difficult lifestyle, Mango Street is the place with which she identifies at this time in her life.
De, Botton Alain. "A Broken Heart." Comp. Arthur Schopenhauer. The Consolations of Philosophy. New York: Pantheon, 2000. N. pag. Print.
I remember reading one book about home, the author use a few examples to show what his ideal home was. The author used one multimillionaire as an example, one day the multimillionaire was found by a policeman near his house drunk. The police offer to drive him home, he replied: “Home? I don’t have a home.” When the policeman asks him about his house he said “That’s not my home, that’s just where I live.” According to the author most of multimillionaire’s family has died he lived along all by himself. The author also used another example of a man whose family got drafted apart by a civil war, after 20 years he finally found his daughter, the man instant burst with tears and said, “I’ve finally got a home again.” I believe that home means more than just a place for shelter and for family storage any more. A lot of people are still happy when they are living in cardboard boxes because they are living with the ones who they love and love them back. Without the love the house could not be comfortable at all. Statistics show that the leading cause of suicide among youth and teens are family violence. They often can’t find comfort in both home and school, and can’t find hopes in life.
“Home is where love resides, memories are created, friends always belong, and laughter never ends (Robot check).” A place becomes a home for me when I am around all the things that I enjoy and love. For example, when I am around everyone that I love, I enjoy a peaceful environment and the beautiful landscapes around me. The interpretation of home for me is not a physical thing that I see or that I can remember or even certain thoughts that I can relate, but it is a sensation that overcomes me when I envision being in the comfort of my own home. However, I know that this is a feeling that is calming to my soul and it quietly reassures me that I genuinely belong in a place where I can be free from people constantly judging me.