Theme Of The Poem Home

Warsan Shire’s poem “Home” describes the atrocities of abandoning a person’s homeland, for reasons like takeover and danger, to the point that the emotions inspired by a homeland become unrecognizable, this cause many to become refugees seeking safety. This can correlate to many real-world events in which people lose their homelands and none is better known than that of the Jewish Holocaust during World War II. In particular, this is true for the case of the Bulgarian Jews during World War II since they felt the need to both abandon their home in Bulgaria but at the same time found refuge there. The fight for homeland for the Bulgarian Jews displays the themes seen in “Home” such as betrayal from friends, loss of identity in a homeland, illegal …show more content…
The repeated line throughout “Home” drives forth the main point of the poem that “no one leaves homes unless home is the mouth of a shark” (Warsan ln.1). The mouth of a shark represents the consuming predatory nature that has become the homeland. The homeland no longer felt safe since it has become subject to violence, loss of identity, and betrayal which has resulted in desperation. The beginning of “Home” starts with the theme of betrayal from friends saying “the boy you went to school with…holding a gun bigger than his body” (Warsan ln.7-9) The same can be said of the Bulgarian Jews at the time since they experienced prejudice and hate from the people they thought they were close to since the law allowed such behavior. “Home” also talks about refugee camp saying those fleeing “make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten, stripped and searched, find prison everywhere” (Warsan ln.36). This refugee placement is exactly what happened to the Bulgarian Jews except in a crueler manner, by force. Shire is referring to refugee camps as safe havens to which people flock to escape their homeland. “At least 15,000 Jews of a total Jewish population of about 50,000 have been subjected to forced labor in railway and road construction gangs” (Hevesi, 274). These were camps that looked like refugee camps since they were able to sustain the rallied Jewish population but they were more like prisons. Also, as mentioned in “Home” if they tried to seek help or escape this cruel treatment they would be caught and rallied back to the labor camps. “Home” illustrates what happened to the Bulgarian Jews because they became oppressed because of The Law of the Defense of the nation. Like “Home” they were also subject to violence and poverty in the labor