Wednesday, June 27, 2018

What are some themes for this book?

The general theme in Toni Morrison's novel Home is a combat soldier's difficulty adjusting after returning home from war. Morrison's narrative is explicit in describing the dehumanized state of Korean people, as witnessed by the novel's protagonist, Frank Money.
After witnessing such horrors, the expectation is that, once he returns home to the country that he served, he will be welcomed and comforted. However, because Frank is a black veteran, he is not met with warmth and gratitude.
His sense of "home" has always been tenuous. He is the son of sharecroppers who were forced out of Frank's first home by white supremacists, "both hooded and not." The choice was: leave Bandera County, Texas within twenty-four hours, or die. Thus, another important theme of the novel is how difficult it is for black people, particularly within the context of the virulently racist 1950s, to find a place to call home.
Frank's ravaged state of mind—the result of an inability to cope with trauma—could be a metaphor for a collective sense of being haunted by past torments. It could also refer to an inability to find ease or comfort within one's homeland—a place no less hostile than a war zone for black people.

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