Analyse af 'Going Back Home'

All around the world people daily face challenges of all sorts related to their family. Not just the teens who are “breaking up” with their parents; even adults might be having issues with their parents as well. These problems vary in topic and degree; some might be unimportant where others are very tough to get through. One topic that many people find quite familiar is the issue about religiousness. What do you do when your family is completely fanatic about their God and you honestly do not care as much?

In “Going Back Home” the narrator is an adult struggling with a family issue; religiousness. In this story the narrator is telling her story from a 1st person view. There is a continuous storyline with flashbacks in between. She is visiting her parents in Australia and having a fair number of flashbacks for us to read what she has gone through in her childhood. It is clear she is not entirely happy with especially her mother: “…but I decide not to add that it is one of the few things we can do in absolute harmony” (page 2 ll. 33-35). Throughout her life she has suffered from the extravagant opinions of her parents. A clear example of this is when she and her brother aren’t allowed to get the needle for diphtheria. The teacher calls her a killer for not participating in trying to avoid the epidemic, and her brother ends up being ill from it. If her parents had not said no to the vaccination because of their beliefs, she would not have been mocked and marked as a religious fanatic.