The Bond Between the Individual and Home

The concept and definition of home are elaborated upon throughout the poem in order to emphasize the inherent and complex relationship between individuals and the places they call home.

The poem gradually personifies the concept of home until we can see it with the complexity and emotional meaning that we ascribe to people. In the first stanza, home is only referenced in the abstract, as the speaker says “no one leaves home unless/home is the mouth of a shark” (1-2). At the end of the second stanza and beginning of the third stanza, however, home is given a certain sense of agency. “You only leave home/when home won’t let you stay,” the speaker says, and then, “no one leaves home unless home chases you” (10-12). Here home engages in an active relationship with the individual, enacting its...