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Here is a spectrum of “sound bites” from longer student essays on latest novel (2012). The German students found many productive avenues of access to this work! If you would like to read any of the full essays, please contact [email protected]!

Deconstructing the epigraph

The status quo of a home reflects the status quo of its occupants. The tension of the 11-line epigraph, in which the speaker feels alienated from his/her bleak home (“Why does its lock fit my key?”) slowly dissolves, since its causes have been revealed throughout the novel. The epigraph demonstrates Frank’s insecurities and lack of identity and thus of the black community and collective of war veterans at the same time. The last, colorful chapters give proof of Frank’s personal growth: “Here stands a man” enjoying “a fat cherry-red sun” (145). At the end Frank and Cee might be ready for a new beginning. They might belong to something or at least to each other. The last phrase of the novel shows a readiness which we could not expect from the epigraph. As a promising ending Cee says: “Come on, brother. Let’s go home” (145).

Creating a home

Morrison’s latest novel from 2012 has the symbolic title Home. It uses a word that immediately implies ideas of belonging, care, and comfort. Thus, Morrison sets the stage for a story in which the war veteran Frank Money longingly searches for such a place, often even without consciously knowing what he is looking for. On his journey home, which, haunted by bad childhood memories, he only undertakes in order to save his sister, he constantly loses homes he has made and finds new ones, if they are even homes at all. At the end of the novel the siblings realize that they have to create a home of their own, and come to terms with the past in order to live a fulfilling life.

Frank Money redefines manhood

By the end of the book, Frank Money has accepted his past and is able to move on. The once defeated veteran has developed into a smart and courageous adult. The journey thorough segregated America gradually changed his character into that of a stable and resourceful person. He redefined the term manhood in that he now represents a reflective man who considers women, specifically his sister and the community of Lotus carers, as equal to men.

Ycidra (Cee) becomes strong through self-respect

Ethel defines slavery as a condition in which you let other people decide who you are (127). Morrison refers here to a striking “every(wo)man” notion of slavery, because trying to assert yourself is a problem everyone knows. And it is ingenious that Morrison shows this through her weakest character, Ycidra, called Cee, who in the end seems to be the strongest one, because she understands the key concept: “If she did not respect herself, why should anybody else?”

Cee: Growth through defiance

Docile and fearful, Ycidra begins to defy social regulations when she elopes with a questionable young man. The reader sees the imagery of a blooming flower while reading. Ycidra is definitely breaking the rules which were set by others for her, and establishes an autonomous, though often shortsighted, way of thinking. She experiences a major set-back when she misjudges the doctor-employer’s intentions and becomes his eugenic guinea pig, nearly dying. But the community of women in Lotus help her to accept her now sterile body, and Cee can live contentedly in Lotus with an affirmative new sense of relationship to those women and to her loving brother Frank.

Be wary of judging Morrison’s extreme characters: Lenore

In addition to Frank’s egoistic but robust girlfriend Lila, another character in Home who includes both negative and positive extremes is Lenore, Frank’s and Cee’s step-grandmother. When the family of Lenore's husband moves into her house she feels exploited and betrayed because they share all the facilities of her own home and are obstacles to any happiness in her marriage. Therefore, she directs her anger towards the most innocent and defenseless individuals of the family: Frank and Cee. Although she is aware of their lower position and the fact that she herself uses this situation to her own advantage, she nevertheless sees herself as simply being strict but not cruel or unfair at all. The other characters view Lenore as a spiteful, self-centered, even sadistic, tyrant. But because certain moments are presented from Lenore's point of view, the reader learns that she is also a pitiful character who is not able to say out loud that it was difficult for herself to feel comfortable in her second husband's home and her idea of privacy is completely disrupted as soon as Frank, Cee and their parents move in. So initially, Lenore is portrayed as a mean and unfair step- grandmother – like a fairy-tale villain – but most of her actions are ultimately presented as comprehensible. Therefore, Lenore is one of a pantheon of Toni Morrison’s characters of extremes who are not to be judged by the first or outside impression the reader has of her.

Shoes as sibling symbol

Frank has no shoes in the beginning when he escapes from the asylum in the snow and never wears “good shoes” – which symbolizes his life as being rough since he gambled away all his money. Cee, however, later wears fashionable, high-heeled white shoes (58) and so her life seems to be much better than that of her brother, who has no money and no possessions. But Cee faces rejection by her grandmother and exploitation by her lover and her employer. . . .

Violence in the dark

When Frank is attacked by five young gangsters, he immediately starts fighting back although the situation is hopeless. There is no chance that one man can successfully fight five others. He must have known that, but nevertheless he fights them. He takes so much delight in beating up people that he risks his life in this situation. He wants to hurt these gangsters as much as possible instead of running away from them. Perhaps he even wants to be hurt and therefore searches for situations like these. The man who gives Frank some money after Frank has recovered from the attack tells him to stay in the light (107). It seems that Frank has willingly entered this alley, although he knew that in this part of the town he could become a victim of gangsters. He has always lived with violence and has not learned to deal with conflicts in any other way.

Healing traumas through narrative

The narration becomes a round one when Frank and Cee return to Lotus and heal their wounds. Cee is taken in and nursed back to health by the community of women she had no access to while she still lived with her grandmother. Frank, for his part, takes time to remember and face his sources of distress; the narrative situation appears to be that Frank is telling his story to the narrator, since it is during the recounting that he remembers the blocked out memories of the burial and the shooting of the little girl. In Lotus, a place they had thought they needed to escape from, they are able to face their pasts and heal.

“Lightly” has heavy narrative meaning

In the first chapter it is Frank who hugs “her [Cee’s] shoulders tight” (4) when she is scared of the two men and in the end it is his little sister touching him lightly on the shoulder as if she is the one to protect him from all his sorrow this time. The word “lightly” is also extraordinarily highlighted by standing in a single line. There would have been enough space for Toni Morrison to add this single word to the beginning of the sentence in the line before, but she decided to give it a separate line. I think it might allude to the little Korean girl Frank shot. She also touched him lightly and he could not deal with it. It is said that not only did she arouse him sexually, but also that she touched warm feelings deep inside him as well. He could not endure these feelings and that is why he shot her. At the end of the book he is able to have feelings like this again and to cope with them. His heart can warm up again and he is able to feel contentment. This is the reason why “lightly” in its single line might also be a metaphor for feeling at home and comfortable.

Gaining power over his life though “hurt right down the middle”

Frank is ultimately able to reclaim power and control over his life by creating a coherent narrative. This becomes particularly obvious in the italicized parts of the novel where Frank openly contradicts the otherwise third-person narration, questions the narrator’s abilities (“Describe that if you know how,” 42) and reveals the narrator’s errors (“Not true. I didn’t think any such thing,” 69). Thus, he takes control of his own life story. Even more so, he regains a coherent identity by admitting that it was him who killed the little Korean girl. By making sense of this traumatic experience, Frank is able to reclaim his subjective story and resolve his trauma, a process that is also symbolically underlined by the burying of the bones near the end of the novel. Frank figuratively buries the ghosts of his past and ultimately becomes whole again, as he states in the final italicized account when he describes a tree: “It looked so strong. So beautiful. Hurt right down the middle [b]ut alive and well.” (146).

Re-reading the final burial scene

Despite the ostensibly positive thrust of the concluding burial by the siblings, Frank does not discuss the terms of the burial with Cee. The ritual remodels the traditional prone burial of the Unknown Soldier in that the bones are arranged in an upright manner under the sanded wooden slab engraved with the words, “Here Stands A Man.” The masculine symbolic determines not only the method by which the man’s life is taken (in a forced dog-like fight), but also the method by which he is put to rest: Frank performs the burial while Cee passively watches. The symbolic action of rearranging the man’s bones in the vertical position piece by piece mirrors Cee’s creation of the quilt. Whereas the materials for the traditionally feminine craft of quilt production include inherited fabrics and designs of a family’s generation, the materials Frank requires are dug-up bones, the remainders of tormented and time-eaten flesh. The burial and the creation of the quilt, however, share the method of taking something from the past and arranging it in a new order. We cannot forget, however, that Frank coerced the quilt from Cee. . . . Morrison frames the novel in a masculine historical discourse, and what will come comes at the hands of men, and at the price of women.

Home in the context of other Morrison novels: Importance of home

Taking Morrison’s novels into consideration, it becomes obvious that a home always holds a significant position in her works, for example Violet and Joe Trace in build their home in New York City, far away from their birthplace in Virginia in order to (attempt to) escape their past and racism, and the four women of different races or mixtures in form a unit and a home in the patriarchal society of 17th-century America. Especially for African Americans who were enslaved for centuries, a place of their own, which belongs to them and where they can be free, is of utmost importance. This essay will focus on the meaning and significance of “home” in Home and show that although the novel’s characters might have different understandings of the term, their longing for a home reaches back to slavery which still has an influence on them in the time the book takes place.

Home in the context of other Morrison novels: Social space When Frank learns that his sister is in danger he starts his journey back to the South, which he has called “the worst place in the world.” After rescuing her he takes her to a former neighbor in Lotus and suddenly the reader’s impression of that place changes, when the women step in and nurse her back to good health. The good nature of the women in Lotus seems to be an odd development because the reader did not hear a good word about that place before. Now it is the social aspect that suddenly turns the “worst place in the world” into a better place, since the veritable space did not change. . . . In Morrison’s canon, physical space cannot be disconnected with social space. In Jazz for example the riots in one urban space change life for Dorcas, who then has to live as an orphan with her aunt in another. Joe and Violet move from the countryside into the big city of New York that offers all sorts of services and goods, but also leads to disorientation. In it is not the composition of a geographical space that draws us to determine “home” or “not home” but rather the lived relationships in it that shape our thoughts. If we think about Pecola and Claudia, who both live in the same city, we immediately feel sorry for Pecola and also feel pleased for Claudia, even though she does not live in a perfect home either, but at least in a caring one. In most cases the social aspects, thus the relationships, form our perceptions of space in Morrison’s novels to a great extent; this contributes strongly to her narrative style and could be seen as one of her fingerprints.

Home in the context of other Morrison novels: Traumatized characters

Many of Toni Morrison characters are traumatized because of slavery, racism, the lack of family care or mother(hood), war, and compensatory desire. Pecola from The Bluest Eye wants to escape from society’s disdain of her by acquiring blue eyes. Her father rapes her and her mother does not really care. In the end she becomes insane. Cee is abused by the doctor and hurt so badly that she will never have children. Sethe from sees her mother dying and Frank and Cee witness men throwing away a black corpse when they are children. Later they find out it must have been the corpse of a father who is forced by white men to fight to the death against his own son. Like Sethe, Cee is haunted by a girl, in this case one who wants to be born but has been killed before birth. Cee wanted to be a mother and care for someone but she has to realize that this will never happen. Frank is haunted by traumatic memories from war. He sees his best friends dying and a little Korean girl who offered sexual services. He killed her because she reminded him of Cee and he realizes his taboo desire.

Home in the context of other Morrison novels: Violence

. . . In all of these situations, the characters do not choose to behave violently, but they are forced to do so by the social and psychological circumstances. In the case of Sethe in Beloved, Florens in A Mercy, and Cholly in The Bluest Eye, “[i]nstitutional racism, supported by acts of personal prejudice, erodes the self-esteem of all the characters as they internalize the mainstream’s picture of them as unimportant, inferior, and ugly” (Kubitschek 1998: 40). This damage is psychologically so severe that the characters behave in extremely violent ways they would not take if they had a choice. In The Bluest Eye, a sexual component also plays a role, which is true for Jazz and Home as well. Cholly, Joe and Frank for various reasons have not developed a steady sexual identity. However, whereas Joe and probably also Frank are able to overcome these problems after facing them, this is not true for Cholly who ends up dying in jail. For him, the sexual as well as racial humiliation, in combination with his never having had a supportive family, prevent him from leading a normal life. In conclusion, Toni Morrison, while making use of a characterization through extremes, renders her readers aware of the drastic consequences that psychologically dangerous situations might have on people.

Further essay titles which might interest you:  “Dogs as a motif in Toni Morrison’s Home”  “Lotus: Biological marvel, cultural and religious symbol, and home of a wandering war veteran”  “The ‘lotus effect’ – significance of names in Toni Morrison's Home”  “From battlefield to battlefield in Home: Story of a survivor”  “Facing the past with their heads held high: the final scene in Home”  “Redemption in Toni Morrison’s Home”  “Toni Morrison: At Home with specificity and universality  “The Process of Creating a Home in Morrison’s Home” > and numerous other essays on “home in Home”  “MORRISON & ME: ‘, thick and dark as Alaga syrup’”