Joan Didion's On Going Home By Joan Didion

The home as a place of comfort does not exist for the narrator; companionship with her husband is lost. Her only real conversations occur on paper, as no one else speaks to her of anything other than her condition. She is stripped of her role as a wife, robbed of her role as a mother, and is reduced to an object of her husband's.

For the first time in 130 years, more young adults are living with parents until their mid thirties. Part of this could be an emotional attachment keeping them from leaving home because after they leave, everything will change. However, many are losing their real sense of home and are just using it as a place where they can avoid paying bills and many other responsibilities. Many young adults now do not understand the extensive sacrifice it is to leave their one and only home. In “On Going Home,” Joan Didion expounds on her struggle to connect with her current house, in a nostalgic and resigned tone, and vivid imagery, symbolism, and comparison Didion expresses the regret she feels every time she remembers she left her “home”.

In her essay “On Going Home,” author Joan Didion speaks to new parents about how the experience of “going home” after starting a new family can trigger feelings of disconnection between families, old and new. Written from Didion’s own experience returning to her childhood home for her daughter’s first birthday, the essay describes her nostalgia for her previous home and how she regrets being unable to, as a mother, provide the same familial experiences she had as a child. Using relatable invention, imagery-inducing arrangement, and syntax that inspires more deliberate reading by the audience, Didion effectively convinces her readers of the familial fragmentation that occurs with the creation of a nuclear family.

Family is defined differently for everyone. Family members can live down the street or in another country. Some people have close knit families while others do not. Similarly, home is also defined differently for everyone. Some people might believe that home is just the house they live in, and with each move comes a new home. Others, however, believe that home is where their family is. People use family as a way to define home in slightly different ways. For example, in her essay “On Going Home,” Joan Didion writes about wanting to give her daughter “home” for her birthday. Didion describes her home as being where her family is. In his essay, “Coming Home Again,” Chang-Rae Lee uses his mother as a way of defining his home. In the third

While reading Joan Didion’s essay “On Going Home” one may be reminded of a sense of home and family. In this essay Didion recreates the feeling one gets when one visits a place from the past or while reminiscing about fond memories. This memory is marked by the reflective thought about the ability to be able to pass this same sense on to another. Didion’s “On Going Home” is like a flood of warm memories leaving you with a single reflective thought.

The concept of home has a plethora of definitions. For example, one may feel at home in a multitude of places or with varying groups of people. In his TED talk, Pico Iyer, discusses questions about home, which aids in formulating a definition. One of his definitions is the place “where you find yourself,” which corresponds a discussion concerning home in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (Iyer). Through Janie’s experience, a home for her is a place where she has a voice. This is paramount for Janie as it allows her to vocalize her opinions and feelings, thus aiding in finding herself. In nearly all of her relationships, however, this voice was taken from her, restraining her from learning about herself, her desires and needs,

Through her memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls is implying that home is wherever a person’s loved ones are. Home is an abstract idea in her novel because the Walls family does not have a concrete place to call home. They can’t seem to stay in one place. They just go where the wind takes them because as long as they have each other, there is no need to worry about anything else. The Walls children have a sense of safety and

Home./hōm/ noun- the place where one lives permanently. In The Glass Castle, a true memoir, by Jeannette Walls, talks about how the family moved around a lot. They were always moving because Rex Walls, their dad, constantly was losing his job or getting in trouble with the law. The kids identities were changed a lot throughout the story. Maureen, the youngest child in the family, changed the most. Her identity was shaped and made her into who she is today. Maureen identity goes from a small child, to sheltered sibling, to a christian, and finally to a codependent adult.

The quote, “You can leave home all you want, but home will never leave you”, by Sonsyrea Tate relates to the novel Ethan Frome in that that main character, Ethan, cannot escape the life he had created. Ethan is a victim of his own demise because his fatal flaw is being too passive which prevents him from taking the necessary actions to improve his life. Despite all the times he attempted to leave, every night he would return home because a home is everyone's final destination at the end of a day. Homes gives people direction and a sense of belonging which is another reason why Ethan in the end cannot leave and start over.

“House” and “home” are two terms that are often seen as one and the same. They are concepts that hold a vital part in one’s good life. In order to understand their importance in the good life, one must understand why it is deemed to have any value at all, and how they are each severely different. Answers to these matters can be found in the following resources: Sonia Nazario’s Enrique’s Journey, Dr. Shehan’s lecture on Governing the Good Life, and Miranda Lambert’s The House That Built Me.

What does a house represent? For most people a house is a shelter from the weather, a safe environment, a place where one finds stability and strength, and where family gets together. In the novel written by Sandra Cisneros, “The House on Mango Street”, the author tries to explain that every person owns a home with which an individual identifies, it describes who one is, and determined by how a individual view itself, and so it is what makes every person unique. However, for Esperanza, the House on Mango Streets symbolizes the struggles they went through and the poverty they live in.

The word ‘home’ is something that is often misunderstood. Home makes up your identity and not many people know that. Therefore you ask me, ‘what is home?’ Home is not just in your house. Home is a place that surrounds you. It’s you environment and cause for emotions. Your home is where you are with the people that surround you (peers, family, and strangers), as well as cars, houses, stores, and/or toys.

A house is a safe comfortable place where one can feel at peace and in The Flowers and

Family is what makes a house a home; this statement is undeniably precise. A person could have every material entity in the entire world, but it would mean nothing if he does not have someone to share it with. In other words, home is also semantically related to sharing the happiness, grief, and material things with one’s family. A home gives people a place to care about the people that mean the most to them. It is a place to tell amusing tales, a good story, or make memorable memories with one another. Furthermore, home is more than a place; it is a feeling. It is a feeling of contentment and happiness that they share with the ones they love. Moreover, home is when one knows they are with people that can drive them insane in a second, and the same people can make them happy in a second as well. Home means that no matter what one is going through, no matter how challenging life gets, there will be someone looking out for them.

Home is about a Korean War veteran named Frank Money who needs to save his sister from dying. The story starts with Frank describing a scene from his childhood with his sister. They were in a field with horses he describes the horses being beautiful and brutal, but on the other side some men were burying a dead African American in a hole. When Frank becomes an adult he is soon committed to a mental hospital after his time in the war. Frank soon gets a letter stating that his sister was in danger and could die if he did not hurry to save her. Then he remembers his family being evicted and not being able to take any possessions. Frank then escapes the bastion of the