Home by Toni Morrison

Kameron Townsend and Steve Almquist

Home by Toni Morrison

Historical Contexts

Eugenics - Practice of improving genetic quality of the human population by increasing reproduction of people with "desired traits" and reducing reproduction of people with "undesired traits"

• Winston Churchill, Margaret Sanger, Theodore Roosevelt

Questions

"Home"

"Last name money but we had none"

Italicized portions

John Locke- 17th century English philosopher known for social contract theory and tabula rasa

• Social Contract: individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler/ruling power in exchange for protection of their remaining rights.
• Tabula Rasa: People are born with a blank slate for a mind. Knowledge, ideas, opinions come from experiences via our senses.

Cee- "Mamas are supposed to spank and rule you so you grow up knowing right from wrong. Grandmothers, even when they've been hard on their own children, are forgiving and generous to the grandchildren. Ain't that so?...Well, that's the way grandmothers should be, she thought, but for little Ycidra Money it wasn't like that at all." Page 43

Returning "Home"

Reverend John Locke - "The man at the door took in the full measure of his shaking visitor, then stepped back to let him in." Page 12

"Look and see what's in the poor box." Page 16

Lily- "The loneliness she felt before Frank walked her home from Wang's cleaners began to dissolve and in its place a shiver of freedom, of earned solitude, of choosing the wall she wanted to break through, minus the burden of shouldering a tilted man." Page 80

"Later, spread out on the side of the bed where Frank had slept, the coins, cold and bright seemed a perfectly fair trade. In Frank Money's empty space real money glittered. Who could mistake a sign that clear? Not Lillian Florence Jones." Page 81

" ...a physical house does not guarantee a sense of safety and belonging, with every domestic space remaining vulnerable to "history's invasions." Page 111 Diasporic Designs of House, Home, and Have in Toni Morrison's Paradise Cynthia Dobbs

Sarah- "She blamed herself almost as much as she blamed Dr. Beau. She knew he gave shots, had his patients drink medicines he made up himself, and occasionally performed abortions on society ladies." Page 112

"Home"

Activity

Historical Contexts

Frank - "Whatever home might be for Frank, it is not a place where war is absent, as he brings Korea along with him as he travels. If peace is thought of as an absence of war, it is a state that Morrison’s character is unable to experience." Mary L. Dudziak Professor of Law, History and Political Science

University of Southern California Law School

With the coloring book pages and crayons at your desks, draw and describe, your ideal home.

Create what the home looks like, what goes inside this home and a few words that describe your idea of the perfect home.

Lenore - "Lenore took it as a very bad sign for Cee's future that she was born on the road. Decent women, she said, delivered babies at home, in a bed attended by good Christian women who knew what to do...only street women, prostitutes, went to hospitals when they got pregnant..." Page 44

Zion

Underground Railroad Allusions - Instead of going North to Freedom, Frank is going South not because he wants to but because he has to, "I don't miss anything about that place except the stars. Only my sister in trouble could force me to even think about going in that direction. Don't paint me as some enthusiastic hero. I had to go but I dreaded it." Page 84

• Support from religious leaders (Rev Locke and Rev Maynard)
• Race still an issue in the period

AME Zion Church

Zion - Refers to Jerusalem. Used in anti-slavery movement to refer to lost people seeking a haven/homeland

"If he succeeded in getting through the fire exit that's where he would head: to Zion." Page 9