There is a powerful pull on each character to return to their place of origin. What draws them back? Have you felt such a pull in your own life?
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No I’m with Thomas Wolfe - you can’t go back home. I did go back about 12 years ago - I hadn’t lived there in more than 50 years - and found everything changed so much I was sad to see that. Keep the memories but remember the good olds weren’t always that good.
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I think I can understand the characters feeling that pull. And I think it can be for a variety of reasons - both people and environment. Even though I left the area as an adult, I will always feel pulled by Chicago. It had my early years in neighborhoods, and it also had my teenage and young adult years exploring downtown. As a young adult, I remember keeping my car window open as we drove away after a Chicago weekend and sharing with my husband that I just needed to keep the smells of the city in my head as long as I could.
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My link to “home” diminished after both parents had passed. I never had the desire to move back but still visit a sibling who never left. My heart isn’t settled where I now live, though. Perhaps a move is in my future.
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I have been away from my birth home area for many years, and I still feel a pull there, even though I won’t go back at this point since my family has all left or passed on. I think on my childhood there, and leave it at that.
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I often feel a pull to return to the farm house and land where I was born. I wouldn’t want to live there now but somehow every few years I want to travel 1500 miles just to visit the family cemetery, look at the trails I walked and the roads I traveled so many years ago.
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My father traveled constitution all of my young life - until I was about 14. So that ‘home base’ was never there for me. For example in my 5th grade year I was in 5 different schools in four different states. I related just a tiny bit to the home base of my mother, which we were in off and on, but it was not until we finally settled when I started high school that I found a home base. Now having traveled myself for around 5 or 6 years, I have resided in that later found ‘home base’ for the last 40 years.
I’ve lived far from my home base and do return to see friends and relatives but it doesn’t have a pull. Things change and are not that familiar. I guess I’m too content right where I am.
Yes! In 2018, I retired and moved back to the city that I attended jr high and high school, which was 250 miles away. There was such a pull to move to the other side of the state to live out my Golden Years!
I think Effie is drawn back to her place of origin because is she is looking for the missing Anya, and she misses her brother and sister. She wants to know how they are doing and if they are okay.I don’t know if what I have experienced would be called “a pull”, but rather my desire for a return was more out of necessity. I really never moved far from where I grew up. I considered it a place I could retreat to when I found myself in situations where I needed a safe place to live temporarily.
At times I miss home but there really is no way to go back. If i went back now, I know that the memories and the reality are totally different.