39 pages • 1 hour read
Toni MorrisonHome
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Lotus
The backwater town of Lotus is a crucial symbol in Home. The town’s name is symbolic because a lotus is an eastern flower that grows in mud. Therefore, when Cee and Frank return to Lotus to face the harsh, mucky truth and heal, they are like the lotus, becoming better people in unbeautiful conditions. It is also symbolic that agrarian Lotus is named after a flower, and when Frank returns there after a long absence, he is struck that “it was so bright, brighter than he remembered,” with the hot sun’s prominence, the sound of children’s laughter, and the “crimson, purple, pink, and China blue” flowers (117). The natural abundance bodes well for Cee’s healing and revival. The labor Frank can do there is natural, agricultural cotton picking that “broke the body but freed the mind for dreams of vengeance, images of illegal pleasure—even ambitious schemes of escape” (119). It is backward labor, reminiscent of the era of slavery, but Frank feels that the hard toil gives his mind more strength to rebel against the system.
The Ford
The Ford is brought to the Money family through one marriage (Salem and Lenore’s) and is lost to them through another (Cee and Prince’s). Originally belonging to Lenore’s first husband, a gas station owner who was murdered in the deepest part of the Depression, the Ford is a symbol of affluence and aspiration. Owning a car, which is both useful and a status symbol, is rare in impoverished Lotus. As children, Cee and Frank feel the symbolic value of that Ford when their grandfather, “an old, unemployable man,” does not stand up to Lenore’s cruelty because their young lives are worth less than the security the woman and her car bring (44).
The value of the Ford is once again confirmed when Cee realizes that her beloved “Principal had married her for an automobile” (49). Prince, during the period when he is courting Cee, washes the road dust off the Ford and appears to care for it, so that Cee’s father, Luther, lends it to him and Cee after their marriage, on the promise that they will return it. When Prince runs off with the Ford, taking the status and convenience for himself, and abandons Cee in Atlanta, she knows that she cannot come home without the car, that her personal value is little without the family automobile. Even near the end of the novel, after Cee’s near-mortal illness, Salem Money is still asking, “‘What happened to my Ford?’” (140).
Footwear
While the Ford is the Money family’s status symbol, the vast majority of travel in the novel happens on foot or on public transportation, where travelers have none of the privacy of car travel and are subjected to the scrutiny of passersby. Shoes and footwear are a vital motif in the novel because they are an indicator of how well the characters are protected, both in a physical sense, from the elements, and in a psychological sense, from the judgments of others.
Frank’s footwear is of continuing importance as he makes his journey from the mental hospital to Cee. Frank is wary of leaving the hospital ward barefoot, though he has to in order to escape, because “walking anywhere in winter without shoes would guarantee his being arrested and back in the ward until he could be sentenced for vagrancy” (9). Therefore, gaining shoes, even the makeshift galoshes Reverend Locke provides him with, is of utmost priority. Frank remembers how as a 4-year-old he had to leave Bandera County with his family in worn shoes, where “the sole of one flapped with every step” (9). He therefore values convenience in his footwear, preferring thick-soled “work shoes” when Billy takes him shopping in Chicago; “‘I ain’t going to a dance,’” he says (36).
In contrast, Prince, the man who Cee falls in love with, does not only wear belted trousers instead of overalls, but also “shiny, thin-soled shoes” that are fit for pressing down on the Ford’s pedals but not for performing hard labor (48). The elegant, yet flimsy shoes are representative of Prince’s illusion and his lack of endurance or reliability.
Cee, who values appearances over reliability, chooses her own pair of thin-soled shoes when she wears “new white high-heeled shoes” for her interview at Dr. Beauregard’s (58). White is a pristine color, resonant of affluent neighborhoods, and also of medical environments, and therefore is suitable for Cee’s destination. The shoes chafe when she wears them without stockings, and she begs to take them off in Sarah’s presence. Sarah’s response that “whoever invented high heels won’t be happy till they cripple us” is ominous because it foretells the greater bodily sacrifice that Cee will make at Dr. Beauregard’s (58).
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By Toni Morrison
