Analyse af Ronald Frames 'Coming Home'

The short story Coming Home takes place in both the fictive town of Carnberg and in Manchester. The story’s main character Chris grew up in Manchester with his parents, but has fairly recently moved to Carnberg in Scotland.

Early in the story Chris lets us know that he is not very close with either his parents or his sister, Suzanne. In fact, he hasn’t seen his parents in approximately eight months, and they have only visited him once since he moved away. In general, they have a quite distanced relationship to one another, not only physically but also emotionally. It seems that Chris have very little contact with his family, and when he calls his mother she sounds surprised and immediately asks: “Has something happened Chris?”

Furthermore, Chis very much disagrees with their lifestyle in general. He doesn’t explicitly say so, however there are several indications of this. For example he describes Manchester as “narcissistic” and when his father casually says that: “money doesn’t go far nowadays”, Chris has an urge to remind him that: “Fresh air and the beauties of nature are free.” Chris is also quite startled when he first enters the house. The house has been redecorated and all of a sudden, since his parents have won the lottery, they have acquired themselves some new habits. For example they don’t cook like they used to, when Chris was a child, now they have a microwave and as his father puts it: “It saves us a lot of time.”