Home is...

The main character in Home Is, by Morris Lurie, is Max Gottlieb. Max; an out burned poet with a boyish and sad eyes with an intense look (p. 60, l. 36).
He is meeting up in Rhodes with his two good friends, the couple Sylvia and Larry, wich is one of the places he has got a house or a place he calls home.
Larry is an artist, a painter. He is very modest and attenuates his answer when Max asks about his painting; “Just dabbling” he says (p. 60, l. 5), even though Max presumes that he is winning prices and making lots of money. Larry doesn’t deny this.
His wife, Sylvia, is a very talkative lady, the novel doesn’t tell much about her but that she is sunbathing and likes a good gossip. Since she wants all the gossip before everyone else (p. 61, l. 3) one could think that one of her main doings on a small island like Rhodes is hostessing.

Max is out of a rich family; when his father dies he inherits a lot of money; “Max the millionaire” (p. 61, l. 32). Sylvia and Larry seem financially privileged too; him painting and her probably being a housewife. The novel doesn’t tell anything from their background; maybe Larry is such a skilled painter that they can live carefree out of that.

Max, Sylvia and Larry are good friends, there’s a good and warm tone in between them. Max is a bit distracted but they are obviously used to each other’s oddities, and bear with it. As Sylvia invites Max over for dinner, she notices that he is tired (p. 64, l. 14) “drawn and quatered” and she makes it an open dinner invitation; “if you can” (p. 64, l. 18).

It seems that Max’s childhood is build up on his father -or rather; his father moving around. The early years are in a safe and warm home in New England that Max knows so well even to the number of planks in the ceiling. Later, as his father moved on and the family with him, they lived several different places “each time richer, larger” (p. 66, l. 3). Maybe Max had a loving relationship to his father because when he dies, the poet in Max dies with him (p. 61, l. 32), or maybe it’s the freedom of being the ‘child’ in the family that makes the poet rather than love to the father. When the father dies, Max moves out on his own since he feels that his mother doesn’t want him to live with her. Maybe it isn’t the father’s death only that kills the poet in Max, as Max thinks; it might also be the mothers’ lack of embracement.
Ilena is the Greek woman who takes care of Max’s house in Rhodes while he is away travelling. When he is on his way back to the island, she cleans, makes his bed and fills his house with fresh flowers. She is an old woman and obviously is very fond of Max.
Maybe she senses that he is all alone in the world, and steps a bit in his mother’s place.
He buys her present while he is away, and the point where he sees her and greets her is very warm and loving.

What is home for me?
Home for me is where I feel safe. It could be almost anywhere, as long as I am not pointed fingers at, or have to tread silently around. In the beginning of the novel Max feelings about this is described; “he didn’t like having to tiptoe around when they were asleep” (p. 59, l. 9), that’s kind of the same, it’s not home when you can’t just be yourself. I also think that this is why he prefers hotels even in places where his friends don’t have children to take into account.
For me it’s easy to feel at home, I don’t have the longing for a dreamy childhood place like Max does; none of my parents are dead and I am welcome both places almost anytime. Maybe this makes the difference.
Max ends up reckoning that home for him, is “on the way to anywhere at all” (p. 66, l. 32), since Max is in a way always on his way home while travelling, there’s a recognizable safe feeling in this. Travelling with a known destination can also give a safe feeling for me, especially if I make myself at home, like Max does relaxing and putting his hat on the overhead rack, with a reference to the song ‘Wherever I lay my hat (that’s my home)’.

-fin