HOME FIRES finished thoughts (spoilers)

Fernando Gouvea · 21 Aug 2013, 14:13 · from 2013-August.txt.gz

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From: fqgouvea at colby.edu (Fernando Gouvea)
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 10:13:17 -0400
Subject: (urth) HOME FIRES finished thoughts (spoilers)
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I like "the fragility of tenacity" as well. But no novel has a single 
theme or point.

Wolfe seems to always have something about the nature of love in his 
novels, and there's something here as well. Skip remembers his past 
relationship to Chelle as a great romance. He has cultivated and 
nurtured this memory, and it has grown into something of huge 
significance for him.

But not Chelle. She remembers a relatively recent childish affair, one 
that happened not so long ago and has been eclipsed in intensity by 
whatever happened to her in the war.

So one thing Wolfe is pointing to is the difference between the reality 
of a loving relationship and our romanticized ideas of what that might 
be. He echoes that with the distinction between a contract and a 
wedding, a contracta and a wife.

And this gives us a clue about why Skip goes off to the war at the end. 
He has realized that somehow the big difference in lived experience 
needs to be patched up, and, like many Wolfe heroes in love, sets out to 
bridge whatever differences are there. We are not told whether it will 
actually work; my guess is that it probably won't.

Of course there's a lot more going on. Wolfe seems to take a basic story 
(and for all I know it could have been the idea I outlined above) and 
keeps complicating it more and more, adding wrinkles and mysteries as he 
goes. There's certainly a distopian element in the book, in which many 
fears about where we are going are made concrete. It's very close to 
being a hopeless world. Perhaps this is why being in love with Chelle is 
so central to Skip's own identity: he has little else left.

Fernando

On 8/20/2013 8:09 PM, Brian Doherty wrote:
> What would people say the theme/point of the novel is? The tenacity of 
> love? The fragility of identity? Or the tenacity of identity?

-- 
=============================================================
Fernando Q. Gouvea         http://www.colby.edu/~fqgouvea
Carter Professor and Chair
Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics
Colby College              Editor, Carus Mathematical Monographs
5836 Mayflower Hill        Editor, MAA Reviews
Waterville, ME 04901       http://www.maa.org/publications/maa-reviews

Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words since I first called my brother's father dad.
   -- William Shakespeare, "King John"

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