Home – The Novel By Toni Morrison

Just A Thought

Home – The Novel By Toni Morrison

There are times in our lives when we just want to get away from it all because home is not what it should be. We want to leave home and be free to live, love, laugh and experience life on our terms. Home, the novel from Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison, does just that. Morrison takes you inside the mind of the main character, Frank Money, as he tries to navigate the road of life.

The scene opens with two children crouched in the grass observing what seems like men standing tall. As they look closely, they realize what they thought were men standing tall are actually beautiful horses. They have never seen such beautiful things. However, something dark and sinister is lurking in the night and then they see it, men lifting a body out of a wheelbarrow and throwing it into a ready-made hole. This night will be forever sketched into their minds.

Synopsis

Home is about two siblings, Frank and Cee Money, trying desperately to fit into a world that seemingly does not love them back. Lotus, Georgia, is a small town and has Frank feeling as though he has to run as fast as he can in order to escape it as it is closing in on him. He decides to enlist in the Army and, in so doing, he leaves behind the one person he loves and adores, his sister, Cee.
After the Korean War, Frank suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder and is held in a mental hospital. He is broken. The things he has seen and done leave his mind in shambles until he hears that his little sister is in trouble and needs him. There is nothing he wouldn’t do for his sister.

Frank goes to great lengths to find his way back to Cee, in spite of the war waging in his head. He finds himself in the very place he tried to escape, right back where he started, Lotus, Georgia. Remembering what he saw as a child while he and his sister crouched down in the grass, he knew he had to make it right. Whoever that person was deserved better than to be put in a hole, that person should be buried with respect.

Not overlooking anything but accepting life as it is and coming home to Lotus, Frank finds acceptance, forgiveness, redemption, and contentment in the strangest place…home.

Whose house is this?
Whose night keeps out the light In here?
Say, who owns this house? It’s not mine.
I dreamed another, sweeter, brighter
With a view of lakes crossed in painted boats,
Of fields wide as arms open for me.
This house is strange.
Its shadows lie.
Say, tell me, why does its lock fit my key?

—Toni Morrison

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