presentation of the theme of home in AHWOSG

Presentation of the theme of home
Dave uses pathetic fallacy, "the house is a factory", to show the negativity surrounding his house. 'Factory' creates an image of pollution and monotony. It is the complete opposite of homely. 'The house' gives a sense of detachment.

Dave's idea of 'home' has changed since his parents' death. The use of the diagram "fig. 1" suggests that Dave thinks home is just a schema, it has no deeper meaning to him anymore. Before his parents died, Dave used to describe memories he shared in the 'family room', now however in his diagram it is just labelled 'living room'. Also Dave used the hate the idea of people looking into his home, "People know", "I have plans for them", but now chooses to show us the layout of his new house and what goes on inside.

Since the death of his parents, Dave has constantly moved from place to place, home is not a consistent thing in Dave's life. Home, for Dave, is not a safe haven at all. "He will try bad things on Toph". The pronoun 'he' is very ambiguous, Dave could subconsciously be talking about anyone. The adjective 'bad' is a very dysphemistic term which could be Dave's way of making himself feel better by using a less unpleasant word, or it could have just been used by Eggers to show how naïve and innocent Dave really is. 'Things' is also very ambiguous which again shows how young and naïve Dave is.

Even after Dave's mother dies, she still has an effect on his home environment. When Dave's mother was ill she couldn’t get up to check if he had cleaned up, "I had not cleaned up" and now in Dave and Toph's new home, Dave does not worry about his house being messy because his mother is not there to pull him up about it. This could have been foreshadowing, the 'twisted brown doodles' being the first sign of the mess Dave's life was about to become.