Summary:
The poem look at the heart of why someone "runs away", in terms of what he or she is running from, or trying to find, internal conflict and the apparent lack of answers hoped to be found somewhere else, unincumbered by a past.
When one is lost or astray, they're usually off trying to find something to hold onto, some place for help or guidance, and a way to get home. Constantly searching through the dark to find some form of refuge. A long lonely road it is to be lost and without help. One would often have an obstacle in front of them, blocking their view of reality and finding their way back home and in the case of Billie Jo Kelby, her obstacle was dust.
Many of us get scared, sometimes so frightened that we feel our only escape is to run away from everything going wrong in life. Running away from it all and feeling as if there's nowhere to go, or no one to confide in. We run, searching for some form of relief or some attention to fill the vast emptiness we find in our selves. Billie Jo Kelby was afraid, yes afraid to be alone. She wanted to run away out of the dust, out of her sufferings, out of who she was and away from her home. She is so afraid to be left alone by her dad, to be her own mother and father that she cannot handle the pressure of her thoughts grinding harder into her head. She can't prevent the hatred forming deeper from the lack of presence from her father. Billie Jo's ideas consume her as she writes, " Mostly I'm alone. My father's digging his own grave, he calls it a pond, but I know what he's up to. He's rotting away, like his father, ready to leave me behind in the dust. Well I'm leaving first" (Page 195- Out of the Dust).
While Billie Jo thinks that she has become useless by not being able to do the one thing that helps her escape the nightmares surrounding her, playing piano, and her neighbors don't make it any easier. Billie Jo feels a steady guilt every time some one mentions her mother or her piano. She was feeling as if it was her fault her mother and baby brother hadn't survived. Although she blames herself, Billie Jo also holds a large grudge against her father for leaving the pail or kerosene next to the stove. She feels as if only she is being blamed by her neighbors when they say, "Billie Jo threw the pail of kerosene." She quotes in a diary entry, "I am so filled with bitterness, it comes from the dust, it comes from the silence of my father, it comes from the absence of Ma." (Page 195- Out of the Dust).
Billie Jo left for many other reasons; she wanted to leave the horrible weather and hard life that was caused from it, including the dust. She wanted to leave behind her mother and her baby brother, and the tumors slowly filling her fathers neck. From the drought, poverty and isolation. She wrote, "But my father isn't going to Doc rice, and now I think we're both turning into dust." (Page 175- Out of the Dust). Possibly she wanted away from mad dog and his achievements that she could never dream for anymore, out from the guilt she felt weighing down her shoulders every day by blaming her self and her father. Billie Jo ran from her household duties, she ran from her motherless ness, her anger and unforgiving heart towards her and her father. She ran away from music, the piano, which she though she could never play or love any more. Billie Jo ran from her life and her home. "I go knowing that I'll die if I stay." (Page 197- Out of the Dust).
After running away, our young Billie Jo though that she would find a new home, and family; that she would have freedom and find forgiveness in the new life ahead of her. But as many of us know, you can't run away from your problems because they only create new ones. Most of all, you can't run away from home, for it haunts us every single day of our lives after that. Billie Jo found this out from a man who had ran away a long time before meeting her but was still being tortured by it... Billie Jo writes, "Getting away wasn't any better, just different and lonely." (Page 204- Out of the Dust).
One believes that in the long run we will all understand the meaning of home, family and happiness. Whether we accept it right away, or find out through a rough experience, we all realize that home is where you make it. Wherever it is, there's no escaping from home. Billie Jo did not find what she was looking for in the emptiness of Arizona or on the dark lonely train while she was away, but she found it all back home with her father. "And I know now that all the time I was trying to get out of the dust, the fact is, what I am, I am because of the dust." (Page 222- Out of the Dust) And in the end, sometimes what we need is a few days away from who we are to see that we really aren't anything without it. We can't fight the dust, but we must wait until our way back home is in sight, past our fears, past our obstacles, past the dust and into the arms of those who love us.
This is the complete article, containing 903 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
