Task 3 - June 17

They say that "home is where the heart is", meaning that the image of home, where we grow up and feel most familiar, is at the root of our personal identities. Pat Conroy explores this idea in an excerpt from his novel South of Broad.

The central idea of the passage explores how we come to terms with what we understand as home. For Conroy, home is Charleston, South Carolina, "a town so pretty, it makes your eyes ache." (line 3) Conroy describes the town both in terms of physical setting as well as his emotional response to it. He grows "calm" when he sees "the ranks of palmetto trees". (line 12) However, his response to the town was not always positive. He says that for years, his parents worried about his "isolation and restlessness" (line 35) because it took him so long to find his "way to a place at their table." (line 42) His acceptance of Charleston is the first stage in coming to love his own.

Convoy uses metaphor to illustrate the many ways he views the city. He describes its "delicate porcelain beauty", not "a city with bells on its fingers", but "manifested" with "its own heartbeat and fingerprint" (line 65). The city teaches him not only about himself but also how he should relate to the world outside of Charleston, making him "suspicious of the showy or the makeshift". Feeling his destiny "forming in the leaves high above the city", Conroy realizes that his own life is deeply entwined with the life of his town.

All of us exist on the planes of time and place. Young people commonly rebel against these forces, but Conroy sees the bigger picture.