Midterm

Annie Hoang
English 1301, Midterm
Dr. Murray
November 9, 2010
Significant Influence in Life

            What is a home? Is it just simply a place where one sleeps at night? What about a family? What is a family? Is it just people who have the same bloodline? How are they both significant influences in life? Typically, in my opinion, a home is a place where a family wakes up in the morning, as well as a place where they interact with their family. Thus, since everyone sleeps and wakes up in a home with their family on a normal basis, it becomes a routine in which becomes significant influences in one’s life.

            As mention, there are many kinds of home, in one case, in Joan Didion’s writing, “On Going Home” she starts off her essay clarifying what she means when she says that she is going home. She begins saying, “I am home for my daughter’s first birthday. By “home” I do not mean the house in Los Angeles where my husband and I and the baby live, but the place where my family is…”(Didion 9). Further in the reading her view on home is supported with the fact that it is a place in which influences her most. Growing up in her house, she said that her “home” is filled with “mementos” in which she values.  Since Didion came back home, she was able to reminisce her past and be pleased with having so much memories in her home in which had influenced her.  Therefore, so determined, Didion decided that what she wanted was to also give her daughter a “home” and just not a house.

            Another case is in Andrea Barrett’s essay, “A Hole in the Wall”.  Barrett differentiates between a house and a home. In her opening, she bluntly states, “ After living in the same house for fifteen years, my husband and I moved from Rochester -upstate New York, a small city surrounded by farms – to Brooklyn “ (Barrett 12). Her only reason to move to Brooklyn was because of her husband’s job. At first only her husband was excited while she was nervous. Being nervous, she was afraid that the weather would affect her work. However, On September 11^th, a catastrophe had taken place near her new house; two planes had crashed into a building. As a result to the calamity, it brought everyone together. Strangers were now talking to one another in the streets.

            One day when Barrett was on a train heading north of the city, she saw a “news magazine, a special edition devoted entirely to September 11”(Barrett 17) as well as people around her weeping on the sad event, she said she felt “madly homesick” and wanted to go “home,” by home she meant the home in Brooklyn (Barrett 18). Barrett explained that because of the event, she felt that she was part of the story, and had a story to tell just like anyone else. After encountering a room filled with people with stories and heartaches, she said, “This is home now, I realize once more. This is where I live. This is not going to get easier” (Barrett 19). As for Barrett, home for her is a place where she feels that she is a part of and how it influences her. Nevertheless, although she lived at her other house for fifteen years, it did not impact her as much as where she lives now, and calls it her “home”.

            There is no real definition of a home, or how it affects one’s life. However, through Barrett’s and Didion’s essays, you can see two perspectives of their definition of home and family as well as how they influence their lives.