Characters in Home

"Who am I without her--

that underfed girl

with the sad, waiting

eyes?"

Frank of Cee

Frank: related supporting characters

Frank's supporting characters cont'd

Mike and Stuff: Best friends of Frank, Mike and Stuff joined the army, as he did, with the intention to escape Lotus. Both left indelible impressions on Frank that lingered and affected him a long time later. Mike died in Frank's arms in Korea. Thinking that his true last words "don't tell Mama" were weak and unmanly, Frank lied to Stuff about them. Likewise, Stuff died after his arm was blown off in battle and he bled to death.

Remembering their deaths deeply shakes Frank, and this remembrance marks a turning point in his mental state. At a key point in chapter 10, Frank remembers both Mike and Stuff and realizes for the first time that he does not need to turn to alcohol anymore in order to deal with their deaths.

Cee Money

Lily was Frank's girlfriend, around whom he felt comfortable and truly loved. Frustrated by social inequities of the time, she worked as a seamstress and made a goal of owning a home. After meeting Frank at the dry-cleaners, they began a relationship and cohabitated. Exasperated by Frank's depression and the results of his PTSD, Lily resents his dependence on her and the financial aspect of taking care of him, as he does not have a job. When Frank leaves for Lotus, he borrows a large sum of money, which bothers her. She concludes that she is meant to be alone.

Ycidra, or Cee, is Frank's younger sister and his motivation to return home. Hated by her step-grandmother in childhood, Cee relied on Frank and became quite dependent on him, and never learned to take care of herself.

After being abandoned by her boyfriend Pete, Cee takes up a job as an assistant to a doctor, not aware that he works and researches in eugenics. His experiments eventually are turned to her, and her illness, which brings Frank back to Lotus, is the result of these experiments. She is healed after a couple of months.

Though she starts out as a girl dependent on her brother, Cee changes and grows the most of any of the characters.

"Battle is scary, yeah, but it’s alive."

Frank of his experience

and feelings of Korea

"You free…You young and you a woman and there’s serious limitation in both, but you a person too. Don’t let Lenore or some trifling boyfriend and certainly no devil doctor decide who you are. That’s slavery."

Miss Ethel to Cee after her recovery

Supporting characters cont'd

“Don’t paint me as some enthusiastic hero,” he says. “I had to go but I dreaded it.”

Frank of his journey back to Cee

and Lotus

Supporting Characters

Lenore Money is Frank and Cee's step-grandmother, who features in both their memories of their childhood. After marrying her second husband, Salem, out of fear of living alone (her first husband was murdered), Lenore takes Cee and Frank into her care and finds Cee very difficult to care for. Through her characterization, we getsee another side of Cee and Frank's childhood experience.

Lenore suffers a stroke after Frank and Cee are gone and is left disabled, slow of speech and hated by the neighboring women who care for her.

Characters in Home

Toni Morrison

Billy and Thomas Watson are a father and son with whom Frank spends time on his journey. Billy provides Frank with new clothes and a place to sleep. Thomas, shot by a white police officer when younger, now has a limp arm. When Frank asks Thomas what he wants to be when he gets older, he replies "A man".

The Locke family is featured in chapter 2. The head of the family, Rev. John Locke, provides Frank with security for a night. The family gives him all of their $17 savings to help him on his way.

Mr. Crawford is briefly mentioned on page 10 only, but is important nonetheless. One of the group of people forced to leave town within 24 hours early in Frank's chilhood, he sat on his porch steps and refused to vacate his home. He was savagely murdered by white men.

Frank Money

A 24-year-old veteran of the Korean War,Frank Money joined the military as an escape from the suffocatingly small town of Lotus, Mississippi. His sister Cee is the only motivation for his return home.

Frank suffers PTSD symptoms; we first see him restrained in a mental ward.

Frank is otherwise motivated by a drive for identity and manhood--an idea of masculinity as good, strong, responsible, and in charge of one's destiny and circumstances.