Home

Every college student can tell you that there is nothing like a home cooked meal. The simplest thing in the world can be so satisfying. Abbie's food epiphany was completely understandable to me. I am naturally a person that associates events with smells, people as well. I have many memories that are linked with a certain smell. As a boy who was always hungry and had a mother that would cook great meals, I associate home with the smell of certain foods being cooked, also the way my mom smelled in summertime after I'd been outside all day. It is a very specific "scent" memory.

Back to my point, Home is a place that evokes powerful feelings, emotions, and memories. Its safety is a constant that many of us take for granted. It is in college that we begin to desire homes of our own. When we begin to desire these things we realize that our parents no longer have a say in our lives and we are desperate to escape their shackles. The transition from a child who needs to know that home is there to an adult that wants to know that what awaits them is theirs by ownership is an epiphany that is slow to fruition and like in the case of Mole can come upon us in an instant and as a certain smell. The image I really enjoyed and seemed to me to perfectly describe the feeling that being home gives us was when Rat and Mole are outside of a home with its blind down and they see the silhouette of a bird in its cage. The bird is asleep but stirs at some sound, then it resettles itself. Knowing completely that it is safe from the dangers of the world. It is very similar to what a person feels when they watch a child sleep. Knowing there is such innocence in the world makes us feel better. I thought that the image itself was incredible and it stood out to me as an important piece in the novel.