Home is where I belong

The sacrifices, the beliefs, and the values parents implant in their children will help determine the person they grow up to be. A child is like a sponge that absorbs their parent’s thoughts and viewpoints that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. A bad event can scar them for life. For example, if a parent constantly yells at their child for no reasons and shows no signs of love, the little one’s childhood would consist of nothing but bad memories. This is exactly what happened to Shelly, the Indian girl from the “Homecoming”. The female protagonist definitely suffered immensely due to the lack of parental love and the constant battles in the house. Her careless parents would never stop blaming her …show more content…

“The skin coarse and hard from the labour of a lifetime, the cuts on the fingers, healed now but having left their scars” proves that he sacrificed pain and discomfort for this child (25). Shelly’s parents raised her to be better, to be able to read and speak English properly so she does not have to be humiliated. Her parents simply want her to live an easy life, a life that they never had.

The author uses irony to illustrate Shelley’s change of perception of her father. For example, at first, when she sees the ill man for the first time, she is disgusted by him, especially by his hand. “Nothing in the world would make her take that hand into her own. She did not want to touch death, the thought repulsed her.” (14). All she cares about was to leave as soon as possible, “the sooner it ended the better” (14). Even though she has not seen him for five years, the Indian girl did not bother to touch him, which proves that she does not consider him as a “father”. Furthermore, she does not care much about or pays much attention to him; “She was sitting in a sterile ward, next to a sick man whom she neither knew nor understood – and had no desire to” (15). Ironically, after spending some time away from Charles, her lover, she accepts her father and starts to appreciate him for all the things he had sacrifice for her. In addition, the main character got emotional when “she gripped her father’s hand… and