Analyzing Warsan Shire's Poem 'Home'

1389 Words3 Pages

“Home” by Warsan Shire presents a negative connotation of ‘home’ to illustrate the horrors of a world of threat and terror. Home is often the place we look to when we look for comfort, but for people like refugees it is a place of agony, fear, and injustice. Shire clearly represents these negative connotations by using imagery to compare home to predatory force such as, “the mouth of a shark” (2). Shire also places an emphasis and repetition of the phrase “No one leaves home…” to show how bittersweet and difficult it is to accept home as a place that can no longer provide comfort. Shire’s poem was published within the last five years, therefore her intention is to warn us about the world we may think of as nurturing is now clouded with ideas …show more content…

Home is a place that is difficult to leave behind. Shire emphasizes the phrase, “ No one leaves home unless…” to show how difficult it is to leave home. By repeating this phrase constantly throughout her poem, Shire advocates that there must be a good reason behind someone’s motivation to leave home. Shire highlights what the ideal home is by depicting all the things an ideal home is not. For example, Shire conveys, “ The words are more tender than fourteen men between your legs” (7). Home is not a place of sexual abuse and oppression. Shire states that the insulting words give more emotional vulnerability and to a refugee than physical vulnerability. With this in mind, Shire wants to portray home as a place that is uplifting and positive. Additionally, Shire illustrates, “Tearing up your passport in an airport toilet sobbing as each mouthful of paper made it clear that you would not be going back,” (3). This imagery serves to show a raw moment of distress and agony; a realization of taking on a journey into the unknown, while cutting all possible ties with going back to home. Shire’s imagery and literary devices such as repetition serve to establish a distressing tone in her poem, which is juxtaposed with the warm, and nurturing connotations associated with home. Across all cultures, home is a desirable place; home is an anchor of existence. Home is associated with universal feelings of positivity, which is why when people like immigrants leave to different countries, they are in search of a new, supporting environment that will provide what their previous home did

Open Document