Have you ever discovered something so heart shattering that you a place that you used to call home now is a sad depressing place to you? That is exactly what a young Jacqueline Woodson had to go through. As we grow and change, so do our perspectives on a variety of things that we experience in life. In the story ”When a Southern Town Broke a Heart”, by the author introduces being at home as a central idea of the story. By observing how her character changes over the course of the plot, it seems evident that Woodson is trying to convey this theme to the reader that as you become wiser and older you understand what home means to you and where you really belong.
One way that Woodson conveys the theme is when young Woodson describes how she loves her home away from home. “Always in that memory are the smell of pine and the red dirt wafting up around our summer shoes...red by the end of our first day “home.” Because for me South Carolina had always been home. (Pg.1) Here, Woodson is trying to explain to the reader that even though Woodson lives in Brooklyn, she thinks of South Carolina as her home because of how much fun she has. This specific quote is important because it demonstrate as a young girl she feels a…show more content… “The poison ivy crept up the base of the tree on the roadside but grew low to the ground on the house side. “Don’t go on the other side of that tree,” our grandmother warned us. “And don’t touch those leaves.”(pg 3)”. Here, Woodson is trying to explain to the reader that not just the fact that the poison ivy will make you itchy but the poison ivy represents the racist people in the town blocking her off from her being free and getting to where she wants to go (the tree). This matters because maybe she understands a little more but really setting her up to have the truth revealed. At some point she will find how closely tied segregation and that poison ivy
