Rui Ma
Dr. Lauren Holt
ENG 221 RW
Sept.26 2014
Home is where the heart is
Home, in most people’s minds, is a house or an apartment where we live and sleep. Similarly, people regard hometown as the city or town where they were born and raised. However, I believe that home, as well as hometown, means much more than a simple place where we live. In my opinion, hometown is a larger scale version of home. Home and hometown are special places where we have unique intimate experience and especially have intimate relationship with people there. Though people may not have the same experience, they always uniformly become very attached to home and hometown.
Tuan’s famous theory of place is surly right. I agree that it is experience that helps construct and maintain a place. In the introduction of Tuan’s book “Space and Place”, Tuan claims that spaces are open and like territories for human beings and other animals, however, places embody felt values and meanings. Unconsciously, deep in our heart, there exist the most intimate experiences with a place. Such intimate experiences cannot often be expressed by words, however, it is important because these experiences lead us to the sense of home. People always confuse house with home. Home, in Dovey’s theory, can be a room inside a house, a house within a neighborhood, a neighborhood within a city, and a city within a nation. In contrast, house is more realistic and static. As far as I am concerned, house is a carrier for people’s experience of home. Routine behavior and experience in a house lead to the familiarity of the environment of house and thus we gradually can ‘feel’ the environment. Even when we turn off the lights, we unconsciously know the spatial structure of the house. As we had enough experience with the house, these experiences give us a sense of ‘home’. At home, we feel absolutely relaxing because the environment of the house is deeply rooted in our conscious and we do not even need to think to adapt it.
From my point of view, home is private and secure. It is the particular place where you want to stay when you are vulnerable, where you want to rest when you are exhausted after revelry, and where you want to live happily long after with the one you love. Often, we call people sharing the same home ‘family’. Family is the most common but as well as the most unique relationship between people. It is common because everyone has a family, big or small. However, this family is distinct from others’. Home is the most intimate place where one has the most intimate experience with the closest family. In my opinion, this intimate experience that can generate the sense of home only exists between people who fully know and understand each other. Tuan states that knowing the details of each other’s life is not necessary for intimacy between persons. However, I would argue that intimacy between people in a home requires knowing each other well. A home is a secure shelter for a whole family. Care and conversations between family members are necessary for the maintenance of a home. If people does not have close connection with people live together. We call them roommates but not family.
In the summer break, many times my friends ask me, “Let’s have dinner together tonight!” I have to apologize to them, “I’m sorry, I really want to but my mom have made dinner for me.” Even though my mom usually tells me that I can play with my friends but have to come back earlier, I often return home as soon as possible to have dinner with her. As I grew up, my affinity to home grew as well because I began to understand my parents’ love and began to care about my family. It is my bond with people at home getting closer that intensify my sense of home. Therefore, as Tuan comes up with the play that suggests home is how one human being “nest” in another. I undoubtedly agree with this point of view.
Once a place becomes one’s home, it will never be eliminated in one’s mind. People may get married and move out of their parents’ house. Newlyweds begin to build their new home and have a baby to generate a new family. But their parents’ place is still their home. It even becomes the home of their husband or wife. We, international students, are thousands of miles away from home. However, we still regard the house with our parents in as our home. No matter where we are and what we are doing. Home is the place that always welcomes you and is waiting for you to return.
Lahiri, who lived in Rhode Island during her childhood and adolescent, have had bittersweet experiences there. However, in an interview about home, she said that she did not feel at home in the house they lived when she was young. Because her parents, the adults who owned the house, did not think of the house as their home. In “Rhode Island”, Lahiri specifically depicted their life at “Rhode Island”, which was very burdensome. Though finally they become accepted and feel the tolerance and kindness of their neighborhood. The route to happiness is burdensome: how her mom was insulted at school and lost the support of fellow people all alienate this family to this place. Home should be a place, which protect you when you are susceptible. However, if you feel unsecure at one place, it is impossible you could long rely on this place and consider it the home.
Hometown, from my point of view, is a larger home that shared by a group of people who were born and raised in the place. Hometown is also a place build on intimate relationships. Tuan demonstrates that hometown may have nothing special, yet we resent outsiders criticizing it. Hometown is not only a place where protect you when you are vulnerable, but also a place where you would defend it when outsiders attack it. When I was very young, I had got this same feeling. My only hometown is Nanjing. I was born and raised there for my entire life before college. My friend and I had always been complaining Nanjing’s bad traffic condition, the polluted environment, and the corrupt governors. While when someone not belonged to Nanjing says anything negative of Nanjing, it is a basic instinct of me to immediately refute against him or her no matter whether the comment is true or not.
People from the same place seem to have an inborn intimacy. When you are away from hometown but meet someone saying the same language, dialects or having the same accents, you may feel extremely exciting and sweet. You two may know be total a stranger to each other, however, because you both have the same bond to a particular place, naturally, it is easier to become connected to each other. According to Tuan, language is a vital force in human-cultural geography. In China, each province, even each city has its unique dialect. The dialect is a representation of the culture of a place. When people chatting with each other with dialect that is belonged and understood only by a small group of people, others, who do not belong to the place, will automatically become excluded by this community. Dialect, defining a person’s origin and root, is a character of a place and also depict a person’s identity.
Home and hometown are where your heart is. Being away from home or hometown will evoke your feeling of nostalgia. This feeling is corresponding particularly to home. Home is an intimate and secure place where you live with your most loved people and with your most precious experience. Merely a house cannot represent a home. We can buy a house if we have money. However, home is an invaluable feeling that can only be generated by intimacy experience with both people at home and the place itself.
Works Cited:
Dovey, Kimberly. “Home and Homelessness: Introduction” Human Behavior and Environment: Advances in Theory and Research. By Altman, Irwin and Carol M. Werner eds.New York: Plenum Press, 1977. Print.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. "Rhode Island." State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America. By Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey. New York, NY: Ecco, 2008. 101+. Print.
Tuan, Yifu. "Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative Descriptive Approach." Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Vol. 81. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 684-96. Print.
Tuan, Yi-fu. "Intimate Experience of Place." Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1977. 136-48. Print.
Tuan, Yi-fu. "Introduction." Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1977. 3-7. Print.
Dr. Lauren Holt
ENG 221 RW
Sept.26 2014
Home is where the heart is
Home, in most people’s minds, is a house or an apartment where we live and sleep. Similarly, people regard hometown as the city or town where they were born and raised. However, I believe that home, as well as hometown, means much more than a simple place where we live. In my opinion, hometown is a larger scale version of home. Home and hometown are special places where we have unique intimate experience and especially have intimate relationship with people there. Though people may not have the same experience, they always uniformly become very attached to home and hometown.
Tuan’s famous theory of place is surly right. I agree that it is experience that helps construct and maintain a place. In the introduction of Tuan’s book “Space and Place”, Tuan claims that spaces are open and like territories for human beings and other animals, however, places embody felt values and meanings. Unconsciously, deep in our heart, there exist the most intimate experiences with a place. Such intimate experiences cannot often be expressed by words, however, it is important because these experiences lead us to the sense of home. People always confuse house with home. Home, in Dovey’s theory, can be a room inside a house, a house within a neighborhood, a neighborhood within a city, and a city within a nation. In contrast, house is more realistic and static. As far as I am concerned, house is a carrier for people’s experience of home. Routine behavior and experience in a house lead to the familiarity of the environment of house and thus we gradually can ‘feel’ the environment. Even when we turn off the lights, we unconsciously know the spatial structure of the house. As we had enough experience with the house, these experiences give us a sense of ‘home’. At home, we feel absolutely relaxing because the environment of the house is deeply rooted in our conscious and we do not even need to think to adapt it.
From my point of view, home is private and secure. It is the particular place where you want to stay when you are vulnerable, where you want to rest when you are exhausted after revelry, and where you want to live happily long after with the one you love. Often, we call people sharing the same home ‘family’. Family is the most common but as well as the most unique relationship between people. It is common because everyone has a family, big or small. However, this family is distinct from others’. Home is the most intimate place where one has the most intimate experience with the closest family. In my opinion, this intimate experience that can generate the sense of home only exists between people who fully know and understand each other. Tuan states that knowing the details of each other’s life is not necessary for intimacy between persons. However, I would argue that intimacy between people in a home requires knowing each other well. A home is a secure shelter for a whole family. Care and conversations between family members are necessary for the maintenance of a home. If people does not have close connection with people live together. We call them roommates but not family.
In the summer break, many times my friends ask me, “Let’s have dinner together tonight!” I have to apologize to them, “I’m sorry, I really want to but my mom have made dinner for me.” Even though my mom usually tells me that I can play with my friends but have to come back earlier, I often return home as soon as possible to have dinner with her. As I grew up, my affinity to home grew as well because I began to understand my parents’ love and began to care about my family. It is my bond with people at home getting closer that intensify my sense of home. Therefore, as Tuan comes up with the play that suggests home is how one human being “nest” in another. I undoubtedly agree with this point of view.
Once a place becomes one’s home, it will never be eliminated in one’s mind. People may get married and move out of their parents’ house. Newlyweds begin to build their new home and have a baby to generate a new family. But their parents’ place is still their home. It even becomes the home of their husband or wife. We, international students, are thousands of miles away from home. However, we still regard the house with our parents in as our home. No matter where we are and what we are doing. Home is the place that always welcomes you and is waiting for you to return.
Lahiri, who lived in Rhode Island during her childhood and adolescent, have had bittersweet experiences there. However, in an interview about home, she said that she did not feel at home in the house they lived when she was young. Because her parents, the adults who owned the house, did not think of the house as their home. In “Rhode Island”, Lahiri specifically depicted their life at “Rhode Island”, which was very burdensome. Though finally they become accepted and feel the tolerance and kindness of their neighborhood. The route to happiness is burdensome: how her mom was insulted at school and lost the support of fellow people all alienate this family to this place. Home should be a place, which protect you when you are susceptible. However, if you feel unsecure at one place, it is impossible you could long rely on this place and consider it the home.
Hometown, from my point of view, is a larger home that shared by a group of people who were born and raised in the place. Hometown is also a place build on intimate relationships. Tuan demonstrates that hometown may have nothing special, yet we resent outsiders criticizing it. Hometown is not only a place where protect you when you are vulnerable, but also a place where you would defend it when outsiders attack it. When I was very young, I had got this same feeling. My only hometown is Nanjing. I was born and raised there for my entire life before college. My friend and I had always been complaining Nanjing’s bad traffic condition, the polluted environment, and the corrupt governors. While when someone not belonged to Nanjing says anything negative of Nanjing, it is a basic instinct of me to immediately refute against him or her no matter whether the comment is true or not.
People from the same place seem to have an inborn intimacy. When you are away from hometown but meet someone saying the same language, dialects or having the same accents, you may feel extremely exciting and sweet. You two may know be total a stranger to each other, however, because you both have the same bond to a particular place, naturally, it is easier to become connected to each other. According to Tuan, language is a vital force in human-cultural geography. In China, each province, even each city has its unique dialect. The dialect is a representation of the culture of a place. When people chatting with each other with dialect that is belonged and understood only by a small group of people, others, who do not belong to the place, will automatically become excluded by this community. Dialect, defining a person’s origin and root, is a character of a place and also depict a person’s identity.
Home and hometown are where your heart is. Being away from home or hometown will evoke your feeling of nostalgia. This feeling is corresponding particularly to home. Home is an intimate and secure place where you live with your most loved people and with your most precious experience. Merely a house cannot represent a home. We can buy a house if we have money. However, home is an invaluable feeling that can only be generated by intimacy experience with both people at home and the place itself.
Works Cited:
Dovey, Kimberly. “Home and Homelessness: Introduction” Human Behavior and Environment: Advances in Theory and Research. By Altman, Irwin and Carol M. Werner eds.New York: Plenum Press, 1977. Print.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. "Rhode Island." State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America. By Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey. New York, NY: Ecco, 2008. 101+. Print.
Tuan, Yifu. "Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative Descriptive Approach." Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Vol. 81. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 684-96. Print.
Tuan, Yi-fu. "Intimate Experience of Place." Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1977. 136-48. Print.
Tuan, Yi-fu. "Introduction." Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1977. 3-7. Print.