2:3 – Commonalities in Conceptions of “Home”

by VictoriaWoo

Read at least 3 students blog short stories about ‘home’ and make a list of the common shared assumptions, values and stories that you find. Post this list on your blog with some commentary about what you discovered.

After reading through my fellow classmates’ stories about home this week, I noticed a few commonalities; in particular, I noticed these three prevailing ideas:

  1. Home is not necessarily place dependent. In my own stories about home, I focussed heavily on the intersection between home and place— that home was informed by place and by the physical features of place. After reading through my classmates’ stories, however, I realize that home manifests in so many ways other than in the tangible form of place. In John’s blog, for example, he puts it eloquently that home “is a feeling, a collection of thoughts” (Wang). Another fellow student, Nick, commented on my blog post that home “could be a feeling about a place, but also about an activity, or some other thing” (Babey).
  2. We can accredit our feelings of being “at home” largely to our personal relations with people. I noticed this was especially prevalent in my own blog this week, as I referenced a loved one at least once in each of my individual stories. In Lorraine’s blog, she discusses filial piety; her question of “when my family is gone then where is my home?” resonates deeply with me and I think too with everyone else (Shen). Whether one considers their kin those who are related by blood, or simply those who have shown them true loyalty and kindness, the connection between family and home is a particularly strong one.
  3. Home is not always static. Although some people may believe that home is necessarily something stable or something rooted, I think many of the stories from this week’s assignment challenge this notion. For example, in Alanna’s posting, she discusses how her “constant moving around” has actually made it such that she “doesn’t need personal pictures or specific people to feel at home” (Joy). The very idea that home can manifest in so many different ways also demonstrates that conceptions of home can evolve and change.