‘Home’ by Iain Crichton Smith – model essay
Choose a short story in which a character’s failure to understand the reality of his/her situation
is an important feature of the text. Explain how the writer makes you aware of this failure and
show how important it is to your appreciation of the text as a whole.
In the short story ‘Home’ by Scottish writer Iain Crichton Smith the two main characters fail to
understand some aspect of the reality of their lives, and through this failure the writer explores
his central themes of the notion of ‘home’ and the power and influence of memories.
In ‘Home’ a married couple are visiting Glasgow, the place where they lived when they first met.
They now live in Africa, and have a lifestyle far removed from that they had when living in the
tenements they are visiting. The male and female characters’ attitudes towards their visit are
different, and it is the presentation of these attitudes by the writer that helps the reader to
understand and respond to the story’s message.
The first impression the reader gets of the male character is that he is powerful and wealthy. He
is described as driving a “black polished car” and as wearing a “square red ring”; these are
clearly symbols of wealth but they are also demonstrative of the man’s masculinity. These
details create an immediate contrast to the setting, as the tenements are described as being
run-down and poverty-stricken: “walls were brown above and a dirty blue below, pitted with
scars”. In this respect the man seems out of place, however the fact that he is shown as being
tough and strong – “competent and hard” as the author puts it – means that he perhaps will not
be deterred by the harshness of the environment he is in. This is soon confirmed by the attitude
the man has towards the tenements: his “cheerful animation” demonstrates he is content and
relaxed, and he “looks around…with a hungry look, as though scanning the veldt”. The man’s
almost predatory behaviour shows that he feels powerful and superior; yet at the same time he
is curious and eager to explore. He clearly does not realize that his wealth will make him a
conspicuous visitor to this area, and that it will serve to emphasize to the current residents that
he no longer belongs there.
This, essentially, is what the man fails to understand; that Glasgow is no longer his ‘home’.
While he is there he tries to behave as if he belongs there: for example in his speech he uses
Scottish dialect, and he remembers events and people from his past in Glasgow (shown by the
author in the form of flashbacks) in a positive light. He wants to encounter people that he used
to know as he wants to be an example to them, to show them “how well he’s done”, but does
not realize that this comes across to others – and the reader – as arrogance and boastfulness.
The man realizes the error of his ways when he is confronted by a group of local youths; they
call him a “tourist” and are scathing of his claims of belonging in the area. It is at this point in the
story that the man realizes that he has moved on; just as the area now has supermarkets
instead of corner shops and bingo halls instead of cinemas, the man has also changes and
does not fit in in an area of such deprivation. Shortly after this confrontation the man tells his
wife, “I wish to God we were home”, and this statement clearly signposts the change in the
man’s attitudes and beliefs.
The woman in the story also fails to understand the reality of her situation, although her failure
is different to that of her husband. Whereas her husband initially fails to acknowledge that their
life has moved on and that Glasgow is no longer home to them, the woman fails to realize that
her past is a vital part of who she is; he looks at the tenements nostalgically and romanticizes
them, but she seems to have severed all connection with them and with the past that they
represent.
The woman’s wealth is clear when she arrives at the tenements; she arrives in the “black
polished car” with her husband and is wearing a “fur coat”. She seems to see these status
symbols as being able to protect her: when she disagrees with her husband she retreats to the
car, where she sits “like an empress surrounded by prairie dogs”; similarly when walking around
the area she wraps herself in her fur coat as if it is some kind of shield. The woman is using her
wealth to hide her past from her present; she fails to realize that you cannot have the latter
without the former. When she is in an area she feels comfortable in – the hotel at the end – she
trails the coat; she no longer needs it to hide her. Unlike her husband, who adopts the local
dialect, the woman talks in Standard English throughout the story; another sign that she has
separated from her past.
The woman’s unwillingness to acknowledge the valuable experiences she had while living in
Glasgow is also made clear through her reactions to her husband’s speech and actions.
Whenever he recalls a detail about their shared past she recoils, as if the memories are totally
abhorrent to her. For example, when the man says, “I saw old Manson dying in that room”, his
wife says, “What are you bringing that up for? Why don’t you forget it? Do you enjoy thinking
about these things?”. Even when her husband recalls something pleasant – their walk down
“lovers’ lane” the night they met – she replies, “and you made a clown of yourself”, speaking
“unforgivingly”. Her distaste is clear in the tone of her words and in the words that she uses. Her
rejection of both her husband and her past is very telling. The woman has created an image of
herself as being someone special, elevated, upper-class – seen when she smiles “as if she
expected someone to photograph her” at the end of the story. The reality is that she is from the
same deprived background as her husband; as he points out to her, “you didn’t even have
proper table manners when I met you”. The woman could embrace the fact that her life has
changed for the better, and certainly she ought to cherish memories of the courtship she had
with the man who became her husband, but her shame causes her to deny her personal history.
This shame is also made evident when she thinks about how her peers in Africa would react to
her husband’s behaviour and Glasgow itself: “What would the Bruces say if they saw you
running about in this dirty place like a schoolboy?”. Her vocabulary here shows a clear
disrespect for Glasgow and for her husband’s affection for the city.
So both the man and the woman fail to understand something important about the reality of their
lives: the man cannot see that Glasgow is no longer his home, and the woman cannot see that
remembering that Glasgow was once her home is important. However the man does realize the
error of his ways and reaches the conclusion that he now belongs in Africa and in places like
the hotel that he and his wife visit at the end of the story; his wife, on the other hand, remains in
her state of denial, pretending that what she is is what she always was.
It is clear from the author’s presentation of these two characters and their failure in
understanding these important aspects of their lives that he wishes the reader not only to make
judgements about the man and the woman, but also to think about what the word ‘home’ means
to them, and also to think about their own memories and the value and influence of these in
their lives. The text, although relatively straightforward to interpret, is therefore an interesting
and thought-provoking one.
(word count 1300 approximately)